Nine-Tenths of the Law
by Diablolita
Summary: Wars leave scars. Harry and Hermione indulge their torrid affair in secret, as broken people do, although Harry's feelings for her slowly grow to bewilder them both. While Harry, Hermione, Ron and Ginny struggle to adapt to post-war life, they soon realize even Voldemort's death doesn't translate to a perfect world, as old bonds are tested to extremes.
1. Junkie

**A/N: **This is a sequel to my previous one-shot, _Coping Mechanisms_, but it's not totally necessary to read. It just helps with the backstory, so it's merely recommended that you do.

Anyways, hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. If I did, I would be so rich right now I'd be on a yacht somewhere having threesomes with Rihanna and Kit Harington. But alas.

* * *

_Whenever blue teardrops are fallin'_  
_And my emotional stability is leaving me_  
_There is something I can do_  
_I can get on the telephone and call you up baby_

_And honey I know you'll be there to relieve me_  
_The love you give to me will free me_  
_If you don't know the thing you're dealing  
__Ohh I can tell you, darling, that it's sexual healing_

_You're my medicine, open up and let me in  
Darling, you're so great, I can't wait for you to operate.  
When I get this feeling_  
_I need sexual healing._

"Sexual Healing" - Marvin Gaye

* * *

They hadn't spoken in weeks.

Well, they had _spoken_, if you wanted to be horribly technical about it. It was impossible not to, with lives as endlessly entangled as theirs were. But their conversations had roughly the emotional depth and intimacy of strangers waiting in line for the toilet.

_Oh, hello, Harry. How have you been? _

_Just fine, thanks. Keeping busy. _

Harry could practically hear the toilet flushing, imagined someone popping up and smiling sheepishly, stuttering "That smell isn't from me, it was the guy before me, I swear..."

But that wasn't the case, of course. He was only pretending. It seemed like he and Hermione were always pretending.

Play-people, marionettes on a coil.

_Same here. It seems like there's always something that needs doing. _

_Yeah. So busy._

_You already said that. Ha ha._

_...Right. Ha._

Flush.

* * *

Harry stepped inside number twelve Grimmauld Place and shut his eyes, did his annoyingly necessary daily ritual. _Home. Home. I'm home. Feel like home._

You know that feeling you get when you've been away from home for too long? If you've been sleeping in a different bed, washing in a different shower, eating on different plates, and your body feels sticky with the foreignness of it all; you get that tight _something_ in your chest, and the only way to dissolve it is to return, to touch base again? That's how Harry's been feeling every minute of every day, and he just can't seem to figure out why.

He heard voices, female laughter tinkling in from his kitchen, and shuddered his eyes open to reluctantly trudge towards the source. He fought back the instinct to flee, to evade and hide in his room, knowing Ginny had brought another one of her many girlfriends to play hostess with for a while. Harry didn't know why she always brought them to _his_ house; she didn't even live there. But whenever Ginny is back on break from Hogwarts, Harry has to suffer through making small talk with a deluge of teenage girls; Rebecca and Clarissa and What's-Her-Name and Lorelai and No-I'm-Kiri-Not-Kira and Don't-Mention-Hannah-to-Tracey-They're-Fighting-Over-Evan. But God forbid he skip out on the fun, or else face the wrath of Ginny's relentlessly loving concern.

"Are you okay, Harry? You didn't even say hi to ＿ (Insert Female Friend Here)"

"I'm fine, Ginny, just tired. Long day."

"You're _sure_ you're all right?"

"I'm very sure I'm all right."

"Okay...I just worry about you when you hole yourself up like that. But you can go take a nap if you want and I'll bring you up some tea in a bit."

Guilt.

"Thanks."

"No problem. Love you."

Guilt.

"Love you, too."

Harry paused outside the doorway and took a second to rearrange his face. He had it down almost perfectly now; he could make himself smile with enough warmth to seem like it really was a pleasant surprise to see whatever stray Ginny took into his home, but also apologetic, so that his face could say before he could: Oh no, I'd _love_ to stay and chat, really, but I just have so much work to do...yeah, that's right; I'm an Auror now, it's tough...

But as soon as he entered the kitchen, Harry's perfected, bashful grin slid away and it felt like he'd been punched in the throat. For like a starlet awaiting her photograph, there was Hermione sitting at his table, angled towards him just so, a glass perfectly poised at her lips. She froze when she saw him, eyes widening just a little.

Harry seized up and immediately felt like _he_ was the intruder, like the only socially acceptable thing to do would be to make up some bumbling excuse and bolt out of his own house.

Because this didn't happen. Ginny, Hermione and him didn't "hang out" just the three of them, didn't shoot the shit together. The chemistry just didn't work out; too much estrogen in the mix, maybe.

Harry had actually expected Ginny and Hermione's friendship to strain and weaken, due to...conflicts of interest.

He was probably equal amounts pleased and disgusted that they remained friends this whole time.

"Want a refill, Hermione?" Ginny's voice rang out, and Hermione choked on her pumpkin juice.

She spent a long second clearing her throat, looked up at Harry, and cleared her throat again. "No, I'm all right."

"Well shit, dude, don't die on me," Ginny laughed as Harry opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted with another one of Hermione's raspy coughs. He wondered if she purposely cut him off.

God, what did she think he was going to say? Like he was incapable of being in hers and Ginny's presence without coming down with spontaneous Tourette's and announcing all the ways he's fucked her? He's been keeping a lid on it for almost a year. He could last another afternoon.

Probably.

"Hey, Hermione," Harry said, staring coolly at her. "You been good?"

Hermione tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled, warm but tight. "Yeah. Really good. Really, really good."

Swell.

Ginny leaned over the counter and stuck her tongue out at him. "Hey stranger."

Harry shook himself and walked purposefully over to her, took her face in his hands and, still feeling Hermione's presence like a mosquito bite on his side, kissed her. When he felt Ginny's mouth open slightly beneath his, he got a little caught up in it and pulled on her bottom lip, swept his tongue inside her mouth, allowed the kiss to go wet and and long and socially unacceptable.

Or maybe he just told himself he got caught up in it and was actually putting on a show for Hermione, he couldn't tell. But he preferred the former thought. Less dick-ish.

She was so warm against him, and Harry was plagued yet again with the bizarre desire to bottle up Ginny's warmth and swallow it so he could get it inside himself.

Ginny broke the kiss and gave him a pleasantly confused smile, her cheeks stained red. Harry tried his best, but couldn't muster a smile back.

He looked over for a glimpse of Hermione, but her eyes were fixed firmly on one of the many magazines spread out on his table.

"Aren't you cheeky today," his girlfriend said with a laugh, craning her head in front of his to recapture his attentions.

Harry stared down at Ginny's elegantly pale throat, at the rhombus indents of her collarbone. Then, mostly out of habit, he traced the inviting line of her cleavage with his eyes and thought about sex. Deluded himself into believing it was with her.

"I guess," he mumbled. "What are you two doing?"

She headed back to join Hermione, still smiling, unremittingly effervescent. Harry didn't know how Ginny did it, how she was so consistently cheerful; especially when she was dating someone who had turned as lackluster as he had.

"We were just _perusing_ some bridal magazines," she said in a mocking posh accent and sat down, her back perfectly straight. "I'm trying to convince Hermione to get one with magical flames coming out the back, but she's not budging for some reason."

"I apologize for not wanting to be flammable on my wedding day," Hermione replied, and if Harry had looked up, he would see that she was smiling. But he didn't look. He busied himself preparing a sandwich the Muggle way, mostly because he needed something to distract himself from the sordid business being conducted at his table.

"But it would be so worth it to see Ron's face," Ginny shot back brightly. "He'd probably scream and tackle you to the ground, trying to put you out in a burst of heroics. And George would try to light fireworks off your arse."

The girls laughed and Harry chopped a head of lettuce with more force than necessary.

"Why are you looking at dresses now?" he asked them, trying not to sound petulant. "That's kind of stupid; the wedding's not till ages away. You haven't even finished your year at Hogwarts."

It became silent for a beat too long, so apparently he had failed at sounding casual.

"...These things take a long time to plan," Hermione answered quietly. Harry still wouldn't look up. "Might as well get a head start."

"Yeah, and when have you known Hermione to put things off to the last minute?" Ginny said. When Harry glanced at them, only Ginny looked upset. He'd probably be hearing about that later.

Hermione was...inscrutable.

"I guess you're right." He shrugged and piled on the ingredients of his sandwich. Bread, lettuce, meat, cheese. Easy, simple. He found himself craving simplicity more and more, and wondered if that signified that he was a very deep and philosophically complex man.

Nah. Probably just another cheating, lying, toxic piece of sh—

"There are some tomatoes in the fridge if you want them," Ginny murmured, inspecting a glittery bridal picture with a mixture of disapproval and hunger, as if she wanted to both spit and salivate. "Mum brought them from her garden."

Harry nodded and stuck his head back into the fridge, feeling the cool tendrils make his face only feel hotter in contrast. He grabbed a large red tomato and glanced at the girls again to catch Hermione staring at him, but when he blinked she was right back to her magazines, looking completely innocent.

Harry fought an eye roll as he set the tomato on the cutting board and lifted the knife.

"So, Hermione," Ginny said coyly from the table, "any plans for the honeymoon?"

An emotion he couldn't define welled up inside Harry, and the sharp edge of the knife glanced off the tomato and sliced his finger.

With a loud swear, Harry spun around to the sink and ran his hand under the cold water. Drops of his blood dripped at the drain, crimson against chrome.

"Harry! What is it, what happened?" exclaimed Hermione, close to a shriek, visibly alarmed. She had jumped to her feet as soon as she heard him curse, and both Harry and Ginny raised their eyebrows at her extreme reaction. She had even drawn her wand.

"Just cut myself," he muttered, the pain ebbing away. Ginny gave a quick 'You okay?' shoulder touch to Hermione before sidling up to him, a smoothly cheerful look on her face.

"You're gonna give Hermione a heart attack if you don't stop being such a spaz," she teased, nudging him with her knee, and cut the rest of his tomato for him.

Hermione laughed uncomfortably and stammered, "Oh, I-I'm just jumpy, it's stupid, don't worry."

The emotion Harry was feeling at the mention of their honeymoon left almost as soon as it came, and he idly dried his hands as he watched Hermione return to her seat, shaking and breathing just a little too hard.

"Is it really six already?" Ginny suddenly asked, glaring at the clock. "Damn, I have to go. I promised Mum I'd help with Teddy today."

Harry swallowed back a flare of nausea that he always felt whenever his godson's name was mentioned. He still couldn't bear to look at him, little Teddy with his Dad's nose and his Mum's magic, passed off to his old and growing older grandmother. Her tired bones hurting with the strain, always needing and needing help, help that he could not (would not...technically) give.

Harry swore that if he ever saw Lupin and Tonks again, in the beyond or through the veil or wherever the hell all those people he loved went, he would ask them why on earth they would name a fucked up teenage murderer as their kid's godfather. In the middle of a war.

They should've known better than anyone that parents die in wars.

Ginny quickly gave Harry another peck on the lips before heading back to the table.

"Rain-check for now, but don't think I've forgotten about the butt flame dress. I don't give up that easy, Granger."

Hermione laughed, but it didn't sound entirely natural. Her face was devoid of color and the grip on her wand remained bone tight. "Looking forward to seeing you try," she said weakly. Ginny rolled her eyes before turning on the spot and Disapparating with a quiet _pop_.

The next moment, Harry and Hermione were alone together for the first time in over a month.

The air felt too thick. Sweat prickled his scalp, and Harry, suddenly seized with thirst, retrieved a glass from the cupboard and filled it with water from the tap. The sound of water hitting glass was deafening.

"I suppose I should go too," Hermione murmured, fiddling with the magazines.

"If you want to," Harry said vaguely. His constricted windpipe was making it difficult for him to speak, so he downed his glass in one go. It didn't help much.

"It's funny..." she went on, which inexplicably irritated Harry beyond belief. He tried to calm himself, to remember that this was his friend, his best friend, who he shouldn't be cold towards no matter what.

"I've never really cared about this kind of stuff. Didn't even give it a second thought. I deemed it all as quite frivolous, actually." Hermione smiled wanly, as if remembering someone else entirely and not just a younger version of herself.

"I suppose the power of true love made you see the light," Harry said icily. He then winced at his pettiness and forced out a smile, all teeth and insincerity, but it only seemed to offend her more.

Hermione exhaled sharply through her nose and squared her shoulders. "It's just nice, Harry. That's all. To care about something good."

"I thought you were leaving," he said, cutting his sandwich in half.

_Be. Nice._ he told himself. He tried to strain a smile again, chuckle out an apology, but it wasn't happening.

"Why are you being so horrible to me?"

Harry had no idea.

He cut off the crusts.

"You can't possibly be jealous, not after I just watched you tongue down Ginny."

He cut it into fourths.

He knew he was never going to actually eat the damn thing.

"Harry."

"I'm not jealous," he sighed, putting down the knife. And he was telling the truth. Whatever this feeling was, he was fairly certain it wasn't jealousy. On good days, he even liked the idea of his best friends marrying each other. You know...in the abstract.

Unfortunately, Harry didn't have very many good days, these days.

He let his head fall into his hands, propping himself against the counter. He felt rather than heard Hermione step slowly towards him, and when he looked up, he saw that she was close enough to touch. Something stirred inside him, but he pushed down the impulse.

"I'm _not_ jealous," he repeated, defensive, since her eyes were still skeptical. "I just don't like…time passing…or something."

Her face scrunched up and he knew he didn't make any sense. At a loss of what else to do, Harry raised himself up to throw his sandwich away in the trash across the room. She watched him warily.

"I'm sorry that you feel that way," Hermione stated, and it was the worst thing she could have possibly said. Like it was a bloody press release. "I just have to keep moving forward. It's how I deal with things."

"Shagging me wasn't moving forward." Harry spun around to accuse her to her face. "But you did that. Quite a lot."

She looked very small, but she still jutted out her chin in that prideful way that Harry sometimes liked and sometimes didn't. "I did do that. I'm not making excuses for myself. But I'm not the only one to blame here, Harry. That's not fair."

"I'm not trying to blame you," he muttered. "I just...didn't want it to stop. I liked it. Being with you."

That seemed to surprise her. It surprised him, too. They never actually talked about their transgressions — "transgressions" was a good word for it, right? Not too dramatic or descriptive, too vague to pass judgment upon.

Lapses.

Mistakes.

Slip-ups.

Shag-athons.

— They would just _occur_, as if sleeping with each other was just something that was happening to them rather than something they were actively doing.

Hermione looked down at her feet as a slow blush warmed her cheeks, leaving her flushed and appealing.

Fuck, she was pretty. Small waist, delicate features, golden flax hair, perfect bow-lips. He hadn't really seen it before they had started sleeping together; she was Hermione, after all. Sexless friend and dependable encyclopedia.

That perspective changed rather rapidly after he discovered what it felt like to be inside of her.

"That's —" she stuttered. "That's neither here nor there."

Harry faltered, and then felt a laugh creep out of his throat; it felt sort of strange. "What does that even mean?"

Hermione opened her mouth indignantly, then closed it, puzzled. "I actually don't really know," she admitted, her lips quirking up in a semi-passable smile. "It's just one of those things people say when they don't know what to say. Or they do know what to say, and don't want to say it."

There was a pause that was not altogether unpleasant, until Harry said, somewhat needlessly, "You can stay longer, if you want. I won't make you leave."

Hesitant, Hermione nodded then shuffled back to the table. "Okay. Thanks. I will. Do you...want to help me decide what dress to buy? You know, for..."

"The wedding."

"Yeah..." she flapped a limp wrist in the air and risked another tentative smile. "That little thing."

Harry stepped towards her anyway until he was right at her shoulder; it felt like walking through water. It must have been the same for her, as he could tell she was holding her breath.

"What do you think of this one?" she asked without looking at him, her thumb pressed against the page. The model in the photo twirled girlishly in an opalescent art piece of a dress; a strapless heart-shaped bodice hugged her torso while silver snowflakes encircled the hem. Gleaming pearls had been sewn into the skirts and the veil was bejeweled with magicked icicles that would never melt. She looked beautiful. Happy.

"It's nice," Harry shrugged, staring at Hermione stare at the picture.

She rolled her eyes. "_Nice. _For 350 Galleons, I should look better than _nice_."

Harry leaned forward a little and his chest touched her shoulder, not entirely on accident. His heart started beating fast somewhere up in his throat, and after glancing nervously at him, Hermione leaned away.

"Um, so that was just one of Ginny's choices, actually," she said quickly, "I was thinking this plainer one from _Billexa's Boutique_ might look better on me..."

"Can I just...?" he stopped her from moving further away with a soft touch, and ran his fingertips down her shoulder. Pressed against the goosebumps forming on her arm, feather-light and cautious, petting a doe ready to bolt.

Her eyelashes fluttered, and Harry physically felt her gaze rake over his body. As thrilling as it was, it was still always a surprise to have Hermione look at him like that; as a body designed for taking, for giving.

"Can you what?" Hermione said in a tone meant to be sharp but wasn't quite; not moving forward, not moving away.

"I want to touch you," Harry replied simply, low and just a little bit hoarse. His mouth went dry as he watched her breathing become uneven, her tongue dart out to wet her lips. "I want to touch you everywhere."

Hermione made a soft noise at the back of her throat, and the familiar pull towards her was descending on him again.

When he wanted her, it wasn't in the normal, healthy way lovers want to feel a closeness to their loved one's skin, to bask in that intimate and safe feeling, cultivate their mutual care and affection.

No, it was in the way a junkie craves a hit. An ugly, urgent, indecent desire. Not something he particularly _wants_, but something he _needs_. Like he'll implode if he doesn't touch her. Gotta have it gotta have it gotta have it.

He's never wanted Ginny like this, wanted _anyone _like this; so darkly, so uncontrollably. Sometimes it frightens him.

"You... shouldn't," she responded, her eyes shining.

Surprised but pleased that he was not fumbling, Harry stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, and Hermione shivered at his touch as if he was very cold.

"Harry…" she shook her head, a one-two snap, forcing his hand away from her. "I'm not doing this with you anymore, I thought you knew that...that we need to stop, and really contemplate our priorities — "

Her words, the sudden steeliness in her face, made him panic.

"Why did you grab your wand?" Harry asked wildly, off-topic, strange. Anything to derail her sentence, her decree of abstinence.

Because he _needed _this. How could she not understand that? How could she do this to him? Hermione was supposed to be his friend, supposed to get him, supposed to be there for him, supposed to, supposed to...

So she was not supposed to _fuck_ him, technically.

But if the world did what it was _supposed _to do, by the simple laws of karmic justice, a whole lot less people would be dead, and this probably would never have happened in the first place.

She blinked; Harry could practically see her head spinning. "What?"

His brain pulsed, a throbbing ache of frustration and consternation. "After I cut myself. You, like, freaked out and drew your wand."

Hermione shifted her gaze at the floor, abashed. Okay. Abashed was better than righteous. "It's nothing, really. It's just that..."

"What?" he pressed, touching her arm again like it was for the conversation alone. But he rubbed circles against her skin with his thumb, counter-clockwise, the same way she liked to be touched between her legs.

Hermione gave an almost testy huff and looked him in the eye again. "Sometimes it's like…I'm still _there._ Still fighting. Whenever something happens, anything loud or — or _sudden_, it's like I can't breathe, and I can't think, and... It's been even worse lately." She paused, glanced at his hand on her arm. "I feel like I'm going a little crazy," she ended with a soft chuckle, although her eyes were wet.

"We're all kind of crazy," he responded, his stomach feeling hollow.

Hermione snorted.

"Word of advice for the future, Harry; confirming to crazy people that they're crazy isn't exactly comforting."

"Sorry. I'm not good at this stuff."

Hermione blinked, swallowed; Harry held his breath as her gaze drifted downwards from his eyes...until she was staring at his mouth.

"I just want to be better," she said so quietly it was almost just breath, her eyelids drooping, lips parting.

She was already so close to him, but Harry notched ever closer until his body was a literal hair's breadth away, until he practically molded around her.

He inhaled sharply; Hermione smelled like lavender vanilla and black ink. Poisoned sugar. It intoxicated him, blurred his inhibitions in the way she always, always could.

Harry's hands fell to her waist and he closed the sliver of gap between them.

"Me too," he breathed against her mouth, not even knowing what he was saying; kissing her softly, wanting, pressing, please please please, "Make me better."

He heard her breath catch, hitch, and it was like an electric wire going straight to his dick.

Harry kissed her harder, with more aggression than he had anticipated using, but this had been building and building up; forty-two — no, forty-_three_ days of fucking _nothing_ without her and he was pissed, betrayed, hungry, desperate; he snapped and tugged and bit at her lips, curled his tongue around hers — she tasted like rosewater and salt; Hermione was always two things, always conflicting, sweet and acrid — and her hands tangled in his hair, the scrabble of her nails on his scalp feeling so good; his hands palmed her arse, digging into her, grinding their hips closer and closer until Hermione let out a high, humming noise that made Harry want to explode.

But he pulled away, looked her sternly in the eye and demanded in a voice that came out much stronger than he thought it would, "Take it off."

"What?" she asked, breathing hard.

"You know what."

Her eyes slid to the diamond on her left hand, currently tangled in Harry's hair.

The last time they had slept together, Hermione left her engagement ring on, and it had been a message. That it was over, she was done, she was joining the masses of taken women with babies in their stomachs and a Mrs. plopped in front of their names; which meant no more strange penises anywhere near her body holy with matrimony.

Harry wouldn't even have noticed if the diamond hadn't scraped down his side, leaving a light scar that burned like it came from Ron himself.

Hermione smoothed her hand down his chest, her thumb landing on his right nipple, making him shiver.

She fiddled with the ring, but, infuriatingly, did not remove it.

Then, with her pupils blown, her lips parted, her body pressed against his, she actually had the gall to look up at him and say, "Maybe I don't want to do this."

Harry pulled down the sleeves of her dress, revealing just the peaks of her breasts, round and soft and tempting, and kissed her again.

"Then tell me to stop," his hands curled around her waist and his teeth grazed her neck. "Tell me to stop, and I'll never touch you again."

Hermione, stubborn as shit, stood completely still, gasping and biting back moans as Harry worked her, already knowing the spots that got her weak. He ran his fingertips up and down the insides of her thighs. Softly bit the shell of her ear. Groped her breasts. Lathed his tongue along the tendons of her neck. Back to her thighs.

When he felt her press her hips against his again, Harry decided to up the ante and slipped his hand between her legs, brushed his fingers against the damp lace of her knickers.

She gasped, open-mouthed. He took advantage by kissing her and massaging her tongue with his; she moaned at the intrusion, the way it was wet and eager. Harry pulled her flush against his body, his hand still trapped between them at an almost awkward angle, and pushed her knickers aside to stroke her clit in slow, deliberate circles.

But at the more intimate contact, she broke the kiss. Leaned away from him and his hands.

She was surely trying to kill him.

"I'm...I...This is..." Hermione visibly struggled with the words, uncertain and confused and wanting and _hurting_, so clearly hurting.

Harry felt the preemptive wave of shame for what he was about to do.

"Hermione," he looked down at his feet, spoke softly. _Don't say it man don't say it you're a complete fucking miserable shitbag if you say it, _"I just... I'm a wreck. It actually _hurts _me; do you get that? Not being able to be with you. It's like I can't even _breathe. _Like I could fall apart any minute. Everything is a mess and I don't even have you to —" he made the mistake of looking up to see that her eyes were filled with tears, she felt so guilty, "t-to...to fix it," he finished pathetically.

He knew he'd win if he said those words. It was practically Hermione's _open sesame_. She was a natural nurturer, through and through. Needed to care for. To spare him from pain.

Which was why it was such a dirty, underhanded trick.

And he did feel badly about it; really badly.

Not because he was lying, but because in this case, telling the truth wasn't playing fair.

"Oh, Harry," Hermione whispered, resting her palm on his cheek, looking and sounding so loving and compassionate, so worried and devoted to him.

Harry wished she'd stop.

She bit her lip, and it was one of those moments where he couldn't figure out if it was her actively trying to be sexy or if she could just make him this hard on accident. Neither really put him at ease.

Regardless, her eyes dropped to his lips again and she kissed him, let him taste the inside of her mouth again, let him touch her all over like he wanted.

It was a bit of a hollow victory.

Which is still better than a loss.

Because then — oh _god _yes — then, he felt her hand cup his groin as she fumbled to remove his belt, her eagerness making a surge of pure, consuming _want_ flood his stomach.

He ripped off his shirt and brought his mouth down on her neck, kneading her breast with one hand while twisting her nipple roughly with the other, knowing she liked when it hurt a little. He bit and sucked, worked the flesh with his teeth, wanted to leave a mark on her, to force her to think up a lie to explain it away and think of him while she did.

But she groaned "No marks," like she always did, and Harry obliged, like he always does.

But every time, it takes him longer and longer to stop.

Harry hoisted her by the thighs onto the counter, and she let out a soft exclamation of surprise as her arse smacked against the cold porcelain. He captured the noise with his open mouth against hers and spread her legs apart unceremoniously, briskly, almost rudely. He leaned back to look at her, appreciate the scene for posterity's sake, really, and his mouth actually watered at the dark stain in her knickers, the physical evidence of her desire for him.

Resting his forehead against hers and breathing through his mouth loud and hot, Harry stared down at her body as he grabbed the elastic of her knickers in his fist, pulled...pulled...

She caught his eye and stared back, her hips wiggling with the need for him to touch her but he was still just twisting the fabric of her underwear, drawing it out, letting the tension build, until finally —

It ripped.

His finger slipped inside her folds.

She shuddered.

"Wait, stop," Hermione choked out, stopping him with her palm against his chest.

Confused with lust, Harry stared uncomprehendingly at her as she held her left hand up sideways, slowly pulled off her ring, and then slid it away from herself on the counter.

She looked so unbearably sad, so torn and defeated, it cut through his desire and made him hesitate.

"Hermione... I'm sorry if... Look, we don't have to keep — "

She shoved her hand inside his pants and Harry forgot what he was saying.

He gasped. Flushed with fever, hot then cold then hot again as her fingers grasped and danced over him, up and down and up and down, and then her thumb circled the head of his —

Unable to wait any longer, Harry swatted her hand away and pulled out his cock, clumsily lined himself up with her entrance and pushed into her with a grunt, relished the feeling of her stretching around him.

Bliss. Relief; like jumping into a frosty pool moments before you burnt to a crisp.

Hermione was tight, slick, familiar, and his first instinct was to drive into her, hard, possess her completely so that no other man would ever compare.

But he didn't.

This time, something in him, some part of his brain that wasn't connected to his dick made him pause. He looked into her eyes, trying to ignore the ache in his groin for the moment. He saw confusion in their depths, and something else, maybe. Something more, possibly.

Stilling inside of her, he brought his lips to hers. Softly, just lips, nothing else.

Hermione sighed into the kiss and wrapped her hands around his shoulders, pulled him close, her mouth and hands moving more and more urgently as time passed without him really fucking her.

He could feel the seconds rolling off his back like sand, and imagined that if he never moved again, they could be frozen like this forever.

But Hermione was squirming, huffy, impatient; she pulled back from the kiss, placed her hands on his hips and jerked them towards herself, pressed his dick to the back of her cunt, made him shiver.

"_Please,_" she said, attaching her lips to his again. "You won. I want this."

Harry then smiled but he didn't know why, because he was not really happy, and he was not cheerful, nor pleased, or even smug. He was suddenly... he was...

He was bored, actually.

Disassociating. Like he was watching this all from the outside, a re-run of a show that he didn't particularly like, where the characters didn't seem human.

Hermione didn't feel human, in his arms that did not feel like his. He knew exactly what she was going to do next, and what he would do next, could see it clearly unfold, and it repulsed him. Because if you know the future, which is just the past again and again, there's no reason to do anything. All that yearning, all this heat, only to keep repeating a routine devoid of any substance. No new experiences, no new feelings. Boring boring boring, just like the rest of the world.

And so he did something he did not think he was ever capable of doing with Hermione.

He went slow.

All his muscles tightening with the restraint, Harry rocked into her slowly, felt her walls squeeze around him as her breath came in hot whines. Watched her face. Panting, her mouth was open in a rosy O, while her eyes were fixed on the sight of his cock pumping in and out of her at an almost leisurely pace.

Harry tried to examine his feelings, but he had never been particularly introspective, or poetic, or existential; he'd mostly just reacted to things, all his life. But he tried looking deep inside of himself at that moment, and he saw absolutely nothing.

Sweat that had less to do with pleasure and more to do with scorching panic bled from his temples and back. Frowning and slightly freaked out that he hadn't come back to himself yet, Harry smashed his mouth against Hermione's again and captured her top lip as her fingernails dug into his arms and her moans increased in frequency, became cries and then urgent gasps.

She came sweetly, so sweetly, and clung to him as if she would be blown away without him, as if it wasn't he who was the tornado in the first place.

Sighing, she leaned back against his cupboard, her legs beginning to loosen from around his waist. Harry froze and groaned, close to a growl, with more anger than he would like to admit he had, and she was still pulsing around his dick; her cunt sensitive, already satisfied — as he drove into her again, unexpected, hard, impatient as he chased his orgasm that seemed to be escaping from his grasp.

But he was angry, _furious_, because usually, this was his favorite part. The climb before the fall. But he was met with familiar, terrifying emptiness.

Being with Hermione was supposed to be his one brief respite from this feeling. The inherent danger of sex with her, the adrenaline, the wrongness; it made him feel so much for just a short while, and he cherished it even though not all of those feelings were good. When most of those feelings were not good.

But if this somehow stopped working, if shagging her didn't fill him up, he really did not know what he might do.

And that was another one of those Bad Thoughts that he routinely shut away.

Harry shook himself and decided that he was stupid to think a slow fuck would be good; this was the only real way to have sex, fast and hard and selfish. The way they had always done it; the right way.

He pounded away at her for a while, the loud smacking of his balls against her pelvis filling the room; sordid and filthy, hypnotic but not enough, nowhere near enough, and he wasn't — this wasn't — Harry slammed into her even harder but it didn't even — goddamn it, Hermione was tightening and moaning again but this wasn't working, he felt nothing, he was empty, he was alone, he was wretched — he would have done or said anything to make this good again because it couldn't stop working, it just couldn't — it was all he had, the only thing he had.

"Do you love me?" he asked, not recognizing his own voice. It sounded too gravelly, too raw. Surely they were not his words; they poured out of him like bile, nothing he could do to stop it.

"_What_?" she cried breathlessly. "You want — ah! — this — talk — oh, Christ — _now_?"

"Yes," he grunted, attaching his mouth to her throat. "Tell me."

"I don't know," she cried out, voice strained. "I don't know." Her words were punctuated with moans, drowned out by the sounds of their sex. Harry took her bottom lip between his teeth and bit down; it made her press against him for more.

"Say it anyway," he implored, desperation in his voice. "Say it anyway, please."

He kissed her neck wetly, letting his tongue form slick paths down the delicate skin, left behind a ghost of another bite. She didn't say anything for a few moments, and Harry was scared to look at her.

"I love you," she finally gasped. "I love you."

_Click. _

Like magic.

Harry was certain he was melting. His body spasmed as the pleasure hit him with full force, his hips jerking recklessly, moaning, smearing words of affection he probably did not mean against her feverishly hot skin.

Harry wanted to consume her, devour her. He fought for control that was quickly slipping away and knotted her hair in his fist. Groaning, trembling, feeling like all of his nerves were sizzling, he lifted his hips so that he was completely out of her and then slammed back inside, alternating between burning hot and trembling cold to the sound of her pleasure.

He literally felt explosive. Nuclear.

"Say it again," Harry begged, groaning and panting against her neck, slick with sweat.

"I love you," she moaned louder, in time with his thrusts. "Harry, Harry, I love you, I love you, I love you…" He kissed her, wild and open-mouthed, and her words tasted like they were true. He fucked her faster, hearing something that sounded like a dish shatter against the floor next to him but he didn't care. Nothing mattered except getting as close to Hermione as their bodies would allow. The whole house could collapse around them, they could be under siege, the whole world could end and he wouldn't have even looked up.

He was helpless to her, helpless and hopeless and falling, falling, hearing nothing but the lewd sounds of flesh against wet flesh and Hermione's words that made him finally feel something besides the cloying numbness that had become his life.

"You feel so good," he said, close to a sob. "Hermione. It's so good..." And it was. Her eyes were shrouded with lust, and she was as frantic as he was; gripping him and clutching at his flesh and swirling her tongue around his and _fuck. _The sensations were white hot burning pleasure that made him want to shatter, combust.

"I love you, I love you so much. Oh God, keep going," her voice broke at the end, a perfect sound. Harry thrust into her brutally hard, moaning as he did, his fingers gripping her thighs for purchase. The walls of her cunt clenched around him again and she let her head fall back, moaning shamelessly, fingers curling into her hair, then around her own breast. The sight of it was too much and Harry came with a shout, toppling into oblivion.

Release; perfect, awful, brilliant. As close to feeling like he was dying as he's gotten without actually doing so. He wasn't quiet about it and neither was she; his cock weeped for her, inside her. Harry's breath came in shallow and shuddering and he saw nothing but stars behind his lids but kept going, if only to feel her convulse around him for a little while longer.

Whimpering, Hermione's grip on him grew looser and looser as she rode out the remaining moments of her climax, until her arms were by her sides again, and she went silent. Still needing to be closer, Harry buried his face in her neck and held her tighter, breathed her in, almost wracked with disbelief as he felt himself soften inside of her. It was the best orgasm of his entire life.

And then she was shoving him off of her.

"Off," she said quietly. Light-headed and hazy from his release, Harry didn't move, didn't want to part from her. "Off me, get off of me!" she cried, a couple of angry tears dripping down her face. "You selfish, boorish, _arse_!" A sharp pain hit Harry's chest as she pushed him with all the force she could muster.

"What is it?" he couldn't think straight. His cum was oozing out of her body, and the sight of that always kind of shocked and mesmerized him; the surprise that Hermione was capable of something so dirty.

"That's all you do, isn't it? You just take and take without any reciprocation, and completely disregard any consequences!" She got off the counter and tried to fix her torn dress, her face splotchy and hair twined in knots."'Say it anyway'? Damn it, Harry! Why would you ask me to say that? What good does that do us?"

Harry stuttered, fixing his own clothes, shoving himself back inside his pants painfully. "I don't — I don't know, I was just — just — caught up and — You weren't exactly complaining!"

Hermione glared at him. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to ask that of me." She sniveled, wiped snot and tears from her face. "This is stupid. Childish. I know you have...unresolved issues, Harry, but you can't just keep dragging me down with you."

Anger and disbelief made Harry gape at her, want to shake her by the shoulders. "Dragging you down — Are you having a laugh? Really, are you? Because I can't believe you're actually trying to play the victim. Don't forget who started all this. 'Cause it wasn't me."

Her mouth dropped open and then closed, her retort dying in her throat, tears freezing before they fell. Harry felt a smug satisfaction mingled with heady guilt. He knew what her reaction would be before he even said those words. They never discussed that night, the first night she came to him, because it was so charged with raw pain it was simply unbearable to reminisce over.

* * *

"_Harry," she sputtered, bushy hair sticking to her face from her tears. "Harry, I think I'm dying." _

_Harry stared at her, uncomprehending, his own eyes bloodshot and heavy. Four days had passed since the Battle, and he hadn't had even one single minute of sleep. He felt more dead than alive at this point; the sights and sounds of the world blurred around him in the way only insomnia can blur them. _

_"What are you talking about?" _

_Hermione crumpled against him, and he half-carried her over to his couch. _

_She climbed onto him, clinging to his neck, and Harry stiffened, uncomfortable. She was never this touchy with him._

_Her eyes were huge as they seemed to stare straight through him. "I just feel like I'm...like I'm dying, you see," Hermione gasped out, in a way that made it clear she was very intent on appealing reasonably, on laying out a logical argument for what she was saying. "Or...or maybe dead? Or we're dead. We must be dead. I-I can't breathe, I just, I can't get a breath. So I must be dead. I saw you dead, I saw you _dead!_ We're all dead. Ron must be dead…" she rambled on, her hysteria upticking the longer she talked. _

_Evidently, Hermione was not sleeping either. _

_Harry shook her lightly, brought his hands to her face to look at him. She was still crying. He kind of wished he could cry, wished he were capable, but he reckoned that if he hadn't yet he probably was never going to. _

_After the Battle, some people, like Hermione, took to bouts of sobbing and anguish. Others, like Harry, numbed out, had their emotions flip off. Both had their pros and their cons. _

_He wished he had just stayed at the Burrow with everyone else, for the only reason he was alone at Grimmauld Place was because he was getting desperate in his search for sleep, and thought that maybe he needed to be in total solitude to pull it off. _

_It backfired tremendously, like most of his plans. He was too freaked out to even shut his eyes for more than a few seconds._

"_Hermione," he said, taking a long, blinking look at her. God, he was tired. Far too tired to deal with this. He longed for Ron to be there, so he could pass her off, his girlfriend his problem; but then Harry felt guilty that he was being so tactless, and tried to connect._

_"Go back to the Burrow. Everything's fine. I'm alive. You're alive. We're okay."_

_She looked up at him, suddenly silent. It scared Harry. "No, we're not," she said in hushed tones, the world's most poorly kept secret._

_They were both completely still. Harry wanted to be grateful that she at least stopped crying, but to be honest, this was even worse. _

_Then, without speaking, Hermione started to undo his pants, and he didn't get it, didn't understand, didn't know what she was doing. He was so tired, he was so tired._

_"...Hermione?"_

_She shook her head sharply, twice. "I don't want to talk. Don't make me talk."_

_And when she touched him for the first time — their first time and his very, very first time — he found he did not want to talk either. _

_His sleep-deprived mind started throwing out hypotheses: Maybe Ron and her split up, maybe they had some kind of agreement, maybe this was a dream, maybe, maybe..._

_Maybe at that point, he didn't really give a damn. _

_Hermione took off her clothes and Harry let her, clinically observing her naked body. She took off his clothes and Harry let her, although he wasn't sure if she was even looking at him at all. She clambered onto his lap and sank down on him, rode him with her hands on his chest while pretending she wasn't crying and Harry…_

_Harry let her. _

_When they had finished, and Hermione left, he slept for 24 hours straight._

* * *

"You should go," he muttered.

Hermione had softened now, probably from recalling the memory of their first night together. But her eyes were still sharp on him, her tone domineering. "No, we should talk this out. Tell me why you're acting so —"

"Just _go_, Hermione." Harry interrupted, quiet but steely. There was something strange weighing down on his chest, and he needed her gone so he could figure out what it was. "I just... I don't want to see you right now."

She went quiet for a while, completely still. And then with a furious "_Fine_," Hermione returned to the table and started to shove her wedding magazines, cover-models glittering and giggling, into her bag. She gave a great sniff, which made Harry even stiffer and more uncomfortable, in the way tears always did.

He felt like he should comfort her, maybe, but then remembered he was supposed to be the upset one in this argument.

Wait, was this an argument?

Who had won?

How can you figure out who had won, if both sides were doing wrong? Completely, completely wrong.

At a loss of what else to do, Harry helped stack the magazines neatly and handed them to her without a word. She glanced up at him, face red with the effort of restraining herself from either shouting at him or crying at him, and grudgingly accepted his help.

But before she Disapparated, he took one of her hands in his. Her engagement ring was somehow back on.

"I do love you, you know," he said softly, looking at their hands instead of her eyes. "I know it's not really…not really in the right way, like in the way Ron...but I do."

Hermione didn't smile. He wasn't sure why he had expected her to.

"Yeah, I know. I know exactly how you feel about me."

He let go of her hand and she was immediately gone.

* * *

A/N: Okay, so! I've actually revised this chapter, because going back and reading it was embarrassing, and I think it's much better now. I wanted to change a few things (like if I could go back in time I probably wouldn't have had them have sex in this chapter at all) but too many people have already read it and it would have changed the story too much, so...anyway, you don't care haha, but thanks for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts in the review box!


	2. Drunk Men Tell Tales

_Jenny, I am in trouble  
Can't get these thoughts out of me  
Jenny, I'm seeing double  
I know this changes everything. _

"This is the Last Time" - The National

* * *

Harry always felt safest in his black Auror robes. In control, powerful. A protector. But sometimes, it still wasn't enough.

They were conducting a simple training exercise, practicing hexes on dummies. Harry excelled in almost all aspects of his training, most likely due to his indirect preparation for works such as this for most of his life. He was surrounded by familiar faces, as everyone who took part in the Battle of Hogwarts was allowed a slot in the Auror Office.

But maybe the familiar faces made it worse.

His fellow trainees were all lined up beside him in a single row, waiting for their mannequins to materialize. The goal was to spare the civilians and hex the Death Eaters. Curse a Death Eater, you gain five points. Curse a civilian, you lose ten. It seemed silly to most of them; they've all fought in battles with more on the line than points.

_Crack! _Harry's first dummy was a civilian, and he held his fire. In his peripheral vision he saw Ron blast a Death Eater so well it blew back against the wall, and felt a tug of pride for his friend.

_Crack! _A blank face in black Death Eater robes appeared before Harry. He raised his wand, the spell _Baubillious! _on his tongue, but such a strong sense of déjà vu swept over him that his stomach rolled with nausea. He keeled over, gasping for breath, heart racing. Adrenaline coursed through his veins...the air crackled, someone was screaming...flashes of light...he needed to run, needed to go, go, go...

_Something's gone wrong, something's gone wrong, we're all in danger, we have to get out.._. He moved to bolt to the door, away from the chaos he was leaving behind, but a pair of arms stopped him.

"Harry? Harry?" A familiar voice questioned.

Harry's eyes were wild, and he shook terribly in that comforting pair of arms but allowed himself to be held upright. It took a while for him to fully recognize Ron's face, freckly and turning red, and that scared him more than anything. He gulped for breath and felt his senses begin to return to him, and the terror that made all his muscles lock up began to ebb away. He slowly removed Ron's hands from his shoulders. Once he had finally calmed down enough to remember where he was, who he was, he scanned the room. Everyone had turned around to stare at him. Some with pity, some with arrogance.

He hated the ones with pity more.

"Weasley, why don't you take Potter outside? You'll be excused from today's exercise." The officer leading the training said in a clipped, detached voice. Ron clapped Harry on the back.

"Come on, mate," he said, walking in front of Harry to the door. Harry was glad Ron didn't walk behind him, supporting his back and forcing him out as if he was a misbehaving child. Ron was a good best friend like that; never coddling at the first sign of emotion. He was a bit freaked out about emotions, actually, but so was Harry, so it worked out all right.

As long as they both had Hermione there as a balance.

They walked in silence through the halls of the Office. Witches and wizards pretended not to ogle him as he walked by, but he knew they were. He always knew. Another bout of nausea hit him.

"Need to go to the washroom…" he muttered, despising the fact that he sounded like a student asking for permission.

Ron's eyes were understanding, at least, if not a little ill at ease. "All right, just don't go retching on me. I've got an image to keep up, you know. You wouldn't understand the pressures of always having to look good when you're as famous as me."

Harry let out a chuckle that he only had to force a little, and the two rounded the corner into the lavatory.

There was one old wizard in bright yellow robes at the far end of the sinks, cleaning his glasses and whistling to himself. Harry held on tightly to the porcelain sink and tried to focus on not vomiting, heaving great gulps of air. He took off his glasses and splashed cold water on his face, trying to will away this strange feeling. This has happened a couple of times before, but not quite this strongly.

Not very surprisingly, Hermione's voice came into his head. _"It feels like I'm still _there…_still fighting…I feel like I'm going a little crazy."_

Was this insanity? He looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was still dark and messy, he still had green eyes, that prominent lightning scar that for so long was the only thing about himself he liked. He looked for something in his eyes that might be an indicator that he had snapped, that everything he had done and everything he was had finally caught up to him.

The old man to the right of him kept whistling, and Harry wanted to bash his fat, wrinkled face into the mirror.

That made him pause. Was that violence always there, lurking under the surface, or was it new?

That was the thing about going mad. You can't trust your own mind to figure it out.

"Oi, Wrinkles," he heard Ron say. "That's as good as they're gonna get, alright? Piss off already."

The man made a blustery, outraged noise and left in a huff. Harry smiled weakly at his friend.

"Thanks for that."

"Anytime. Bugger couldn't hold a tune anyways."

Harry put his glasses back on. The buzzing in his ears and veins was dying down, though he still felt on edge.

Ron put a hand on his shoulder and Harry jumped at his touch before turning to face him, willfully telling his body to relax.

"You okay, Harry?" he asked, bewildered and hesitant but trying.

"Yeah. M'fine," he croaked back, trying to look bolstered so that Ron wouldn't try to hug him.

But it couldn't be avoided. With a robust and upbeat, "Ahhh, come here," Ron pulled him into a loose embrace like he always did when Harry had an "episode"; because, he surmised, that was just the new Weasley way, the Thing To Do. Pissed because someone ate the last pudding you were saving without asking? Hug it out. Someone blasts a picture of a certain dead brother because they just couldn't stand him staring anymore? Hug it out. Someone has a nervous breakdown in the middle of their Auror training due to messed up events that eventually brought down an evil Dark Lord? You hug that shit out, man.

Harry clapped him on the back in that way blokes do to not feel uncomfortable in a hug, that way Hermione would have rolled her eyes at. He felt a stab of guilt low in his stomach thinking of Hermione, and quickly let go of Ron as if he might burn him.

"Thanks," Harry muttered, embarrassed, staring at his feet. "I... You know I couldn't do this without you. Any of this. Right?"

Ron shrugged and chuckled, looking almost as embarrassed as Harry felt. "Yeah, well. I'm here for you, you know?"

Harry nodded, not knowing what else to say, and there was a weird pause. They'd never really had weird pauses before, and he didn't know what to make of it.

"Come on," Ron said dismissively, waving off the awkward moment with a grin and throwing his arm around Harry's shoulders. "I think you need a drink."

* * *

They ended up at the Leaky Cauldron, which had made no real efforts at renovation since the War. Still gloomy, still shabby, still filled with the smoke of old pipes smoked by even older wizards, the pub's static nature was actually a bit of a comfort to Harry. Both Harry and Ron had several drinks before night even fell, although Ron had a few more than Harry. He knew that he shouldn't be drinking with Ron, knew that his friend was using it as a crutch, but tonight seemed like a good night to compromise his ideals. And who else did he have to get drunk with in the middle of the day?

Harry was drinking deeply from his (fourth? fifth?) glass of brandy when the doors opened to reveal a small, somber group. He saw Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas enter first, side by side as usual. Then Cho Chang, then the Parvati twins, Hannah Abbott, Fay Dunbar, another girl he didn't know the name of but knew was Hermione's old roommate, and, to his surprise, Pansy Parkinson. He bristled a bit, not forgetting that the last time he had seen Pansy she attempted to sell him out to Voldemort. She brought up the rear and was accompanied by a tall man with a pinched face Harry had never seen before, and they headed for the back of the pub away from everyone else.

"What's all this, then?" Ron exclaimed, smiling at his friends. The four boys quickly exchanged embraces, and each of the girls smiled at them before sitting at a table nearby. Cho gave Harry a very small hug before sitting down, and it made Harry feel remarkably pubescent and awkward. It also made him poignantly grateful that he was no longer a hellish fifteen years old.

"Hi, Harry," she said softly, offering a benign smile. Harry returned it weakly, for he did not particularly feel like smiling but also did not want her to think he was holding some weird teenage grudge.

"Barman!" Ron barked, paying them no mind, "Another round, posthaste!"

"You know my name, Ronald," the owner replied tiredly. Ron slammed his fist on the bar.

"No time for pleasantries, barman!"

"Sorry, Tom," Harry said, tossing him some Galleons, grateful for the opportunity to ignore his ex-girlfriend's presence by his side. "Another round on me."

"Cheers, Harry," said Dean, nodding towards him with his glass. The boys sat down with Harry and Ron at the bar while the girls (including Cho, thank God) were served their drinks. It was quiet for a moment as they all took large gulps of whiskey, and Harry finished his to the last dregs.

His head was swimming nicely and he felt a familiar and pleasant heat rise to the back of his neck as he looked around, and realized that he was waiting for something to happen.

"So what are we all out for, eh?" Ron asked gregariously, rising to the occasion. "Little reunion?"

Dean and Seamus exchanged looks. Harry saw the girls tense from the corner of his eye.

"Do you not know what today is?" Seamus said, looking at Ron strangely. Ron glanced back at Harry, who shrugged. He didn't know what Seamus was talking about either.

Seamus eyed them both while he took another long drink, and opened his mouth to speak again.

However, Parvati Patil beat him to it. She looked at Ron pointedly, with watery eyes and a fierce, serious expression on her face that Harry had never seen her wear before. She choked out, in a voice that wasn't at all silly or shrill like it always had been in school, "Today is Lavender's birthday. At least, it would've been."

Everyone suddenly found the floor to be very interesting.

Harry immediately and fervently wished he wasn't drunk anymore. His body was reacting strangely to the news, too hot and too restless, and he forced down the odd, nervous desire to laugh.

"Oh," said Ron, running a hand across his face as if suddenly realizing he was exhausted. "Well." He raised his drink. "A toast, to Lavender Brown." He swayed and his mouth twisted into something that was neither a smile nor a frown. He paused and stared gloomily at his former classmates for effect. "The girl I used and threw away, because I am a selfish cunt."

Ron drained the glass. Harry didn't feel like laughing anymore. He noticed Pansy rolled her eyes at Ron's impromptu speech but drank her whiskey a little too quickly to be apathetic, and Harry wondered what that was about in spite of himself.

Parvati covered her mouth with her hand and let out a hiccup-y sob before hiding her face in Padma's shoulder, and Harry was greeted with the urgent and uncomfortable feeling that it was time to leave.

Thankfully, Ron felt it too. He got up, wobbling, from his stool and started his stumbling walk out the door. Before making it out, however, he reached behind the counter and snagged a bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky, to Tom's annoyance.

"Hey!" he protested, his gray eyebrows knotting together angrily.

Ron pointed to Harry. "What? I'm with the Chosen One!" and popped the lid before taking a swig. Harry mumbled another apology and gave Tom another few Galleons for the bottle and the trouble.

"All hail," he heard someone grumble scornfully behind him, but he was already out the door.

They didn't want to Apparate for fear they may get sick or splinched, so the inebriated duo opted to walk back to Ron's flat he shared with Hermione. That is until they stumbled across a 24-hour broom rental shop, and giddily hopped onto a pair of fraying Nimbus 1700s. After a while of drunkenly flying around, they were sternly stopped by a member of the Ministry Police. The officer barked them down and drew his wand at them when instead of complying, Ron cackled and dropped a glob of Ooze from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes on his head. Red-faced and brandishing his wand, the officer shot Ron down and proceeded to arrest him. Ron shouted in contention and Harry forced himself to stop smiling before descending to the ground.

"Excuse me, officer, but that won't be necessary." Harry said, trying to sound firm.

The man's eyes grew wide. "H-Harry Potter? I'm—I'm so sorry, sir, please forgive me, I didn't realize—"

"Yeah," roared Ron. "Un-cuff me and maybe we'll forget about your little mistake, eh? Wouldn't want your boss to hear about this."

"Yessir, sorry sirs," he stuttered, releasing Ron from the magical shackles. The two gave the officer harrowing looks.

"You watch yourself, all right?" said Harry, struggling to hold back laughter. "Next time I might not be so forgiving."

The man looked down. "Absolutely. Won't happen again, sir."

Harry and Ron turned their backs on him and tried their best to walk in a straight line. When they were far enough away, they nearly collapsed in a fit of giggles that made Harry feel like he'd never be able to stop laughing again. Times like this, he thought he might be alright after all.

"Come on," said Ron after wiping the tears from his eyes. "Time for us to get home to the missus."

It bothered Harry, when Ron referred to Hermione like that. Like she was jointly theirs. But it might have only bothered him because he felt like it was true.

* * *

They finally made it back to the flat, and both Harry and Ron managed to get even drunker as the night wore on thanks to the bottle Ron had the not so brilliant idea to take. It was very late, and they tried to be as quiet as possible going into their place so they wouldn't wake Hermione. Harry helped support Ron's rapidly drooping body, and slowly, achingly slowly, began turning the knob in the quietest fashion possible—

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?"

Hermione had thrown open the door so quickly Harry almost fell down from shock. She thundered over them, somehow appearing to tower over the boys despite the fact she was smaller than both of them. Ron tried to smile.

"Heeey, 'ermione, we were jush—"

"Oh, save it!" she threw her hands up and stalked away.

Ron made a face at Harry and Harry grimaced in return. They crossed the threshold and saw Hermione on the couch, fuming, with her arms crossed over her. But she was glaring only at Harry, and not Ron, which Harry felt was a bit unfair. He made sure Ron got home safe, after all. They shuffled up the stairs and headed towards the bedroom, but Ron suddenly grabbed at Harry's shirt, looking pale.

"Actually," he slurred, "maybe we should stop at the loo firsh."

Harry grunted and shifted direction, pulling Ron towards the lavatory. It was a pretty nice flat, as the Ministry had generously compensated all three of them for their work in the War and Ron could finally afford something good of his own. (Actually, they had tried to compensate Harry, but he had insisted his portion go equally to Ron and Hermione. He didn't need it, after all.)

Harry tried his best to place Ron gracefully on the floor, but it didn't work out too well. The drunk helping the drunker never does.

"Sorry about 'ermione," Ron said, struggling to find a comfortable position. Harry frowned.

"Don't worry about it." It felt wrong, to have Ron apologize on behalf of Hermione to him. He realized that's what married people do. Ron and Hermione were a unit now, responsible for the actions of both themselves and their partner. Harry hated that.

"She worries, but, tha's good, to have someone worried about you." Ron closed his eyes dreamily. "Ah, mate. We did it. We won, we've settled down. Fell in love."

Harry's head was starting to hurt.

"I'm getting married to the love…my life. Love of my life. Tha's what she says too. She wants to marry me! Fancy that."

It was suddenly very hot. When did it get so hot? Perspiration built on Harry's forehead and he wiped it away.

"And then, you know, we've got careers. And then we'll have kids. And you'll marry Ginny and you'll have kids, and those kids will have kids…and it's like…none of this bad stuff will have even happened. Everyone will jus' forget and love and live and be happy. I can't wait for that."

The nausea was back. But it wasn't from the alcohol. The walls were closing in on Harry and he felt like he couldn't breathe.

"I'm going to get some water," he croaked, and all but fled the bathroom.

"Okey hokey, I'm gonna…be on the floor. It's a very nice floor."

Harry heard Ron crumple behind him as he raced down the stairs two at a time. Hermione was waiting for him, hands on her hips, a cross expression on her face.

"What is wrong with you?" she snapped. "How are we supposed to be a support system if you enable him like this? You're supposed to be helping him deal with his feelings, not getting pissed with him at some disgusting pub."

Harry wasn't listening. He was staring at her but not seeing her. What he saw in a Hermione-shaped space was a trap-door: a beautiful, (loud), escape rope that made his skin sing when she touched him and the cushy future that seemed to be spinning increasingly out of his control crumble into dust. A key to a past that everyone was so damn content to lock away. But Harry couldn't lock it away. He didn't want to move on. He walked steadily towards her, his brain somewhere still on the top of the stairs, and every step was a deliberate assassination of the words that sent him down here.

_Settle down…you'll marry Ginny…you'll have kids…everyone will just forget…_

He pulled her close and kissed her. He immediately felt all the tension in his chest leave him the second his lips met hers. He didn't care if Ron came down and saw them, wouldn't care if Ginny popped up and caught them, wouldn't care if the whole world condemned them. She felt like heaven in his arms.

Turns out, heaven throws sucker punches.

She struck him hard in the gut, and Harry instantly fell away from her, clutching at his stomach and swearing in shock and bewilderment.

"What. Are. You. _Thinking?_" she seethed, teeth bared. "This is my _home_! That I share with my fiancé! Your best friend, who, in case you have forgotten, is right upstairs."

"Blimey, Hermione," groaned Harry, still doubled over in pain. "You didn't have to hit me quite that hard."

"Oh, you'll live. You always do," she muttered before walking into their delicately furnished kitchen. It was the kitchen that Harry could most easily see touches of both Hermione and Ron; warm, muted colors that Hermione liked, that were reminiscent of an English professor's study. But then there was also that charming Weasley clutter, cakes that Hermione surely didn't bake and kitschy accessories that Hermione definitely wouldn't select.

There was a small piece of Harry that wanted to smash all of it to bits.

Hermione put the kettle on and sighed. "Would you like some tea as well?"

He looked blankly at her. "You just punched me in the stomach."

She lit the stove with her wand and faced him. "You snogged me with Ron upstairs. What did you think I would do?" she whispered harshly.

Harry made a face. "Not punch me in the stomach."

"It was a reflex," she answered.

"Bloody awful reflex."

She scoffed. "I'm _so_ sorry that I wasn't in the greatest of spirits after my boyfriend came home and could barely stand. That was _definitely_ an opportune time for you to romance me."

Harry's voice was dead flat. "Is that what we are? Some kind of romance?"

Hermione blushed and looked like she was glad she had an excuse to turn around when the kettle started screaming. Harry noticed her hands were shaking when she poured the boiling water into a tea pot.

"You do realize," she said, her voice unsteady, "that I haven't the slightest idea of what it is we are."

Harry leaned back against the table, starting to feel woozy. He closed his eyes and his voice cracked when he spoke again. "Damn. I thought you would know. You're supposed to be the smart one."

She was quiet. "I'm not so sure, these days."

Harry's eyes opened at that. "I'm sure. I'm always sure about you."

She clutched her mug as she stared at him. "You shouldn't talk to me like that."

"Like what? Nicely?"

"Like..." Hermione gestured into empty space as if it would bring her the answers. "Like I'm your girlfriend or something. It isn't healthy. You know how you can get carried away with things sometimes, especially girls. I just...I can't be your new fixation."

Harry's mouth fell open, his back stiffened, his whole body felt unpleasantly hot, and he realized he was offended. He couldn't tell if he was offended because she was so, so wrong about him, or because she was right and it hit too close to home, but it definitely wasn't helping by the fact that she was looking at him so expectantly it bordered on pompous, as if she had just answered a question in school correctly and she knew she had answered correctly and was simply waiting for him to offer her a backslap and a couple points for Gryffindor.

_Fuck _that.

He laughed humorlessly; it came out sounding mean, which was good. He wanted to be mean. "I am so _sick_ of you."

"Harry—"

"I mean it. I really do. You're toxic." Harry was astounded, infuriated with her. He felt like she was single-handedly shredding his sanity into pieces and the alcohol made him louder, and probably angrier, than he would normally have been.

"Just calm down," she said, holding her cup of tea like a crucifix.

"I won't. I'm tired of you jerking me around, making me feel like I'm some kind of pathetic stalker even though you've been using me just as much as I've been using you—"

"Harry, are you sure you don't want some tea—"

"NO, I DON'T WANT ANY BLOODY TEA!" he bellowed, fists clenched.

"Keep your voice down!" she hissed.

"No!" He grabbed whatever was nearest to him and threw it to the ground. Light pink plates. They shattered and rebounded off the floor, narrowly missing Hermione's exposed legs. "And this kitchen is _ugly_!"

He reached behind him again, wanting to destroy something else that was loved. He felt it once more, stronger, that earlier impulse to reduce all to rubble, tear everything apart, start from ground zero, smash and smash and smash until he could breathe again.

The momentum was building, and if he hadn't thrown what he had thrown next he probably wouldn't have stopped until he tore their flat apart by each individual brick.

But he hurled a square, solid object against the wall, and when it fell to the floor, face up, Harry saw what it was.

A picture. He, Ron and Hermione were smiling and waving together at a banquet. It had been at a celebration about a month after the battle at Hogwarts, and the three of them were honored guests, with other members of the D.A. also recognized. They looked almost like a family, all seated at the head of the table together.

Harry sank to the floor, cradling the photo. Peripherally, he saw the debris from his outburst floating into the air as Hermione charmed the kitchen clean, but kept his eyes on the picture. He remembered sitting there in silence between his friends, watching everyone at the gala drink and eat and celebrate, remembered how people kept coming up to him and shaking his hand and crying at/thanking him and how he felt like vomiting the whole time, kept staring at the In Memoriam section, at the widows and the sisters and the brothers and the mothers moving food around their plates, dazed, mystified by the cheerful ambrosia surrounding them. It was a party that felt like a funeral.

Right before this picture was taken, the photographer had crowed, "Let's get a smile from the most famous trio of all time!" As if fame was something fun. Like they were all actors. So Harry did act, and gathered all his willpower (and a mental re-envisioning of Voldemort dying again, and again, and again) to make himself smile.

About an hour _after_ the photo was taken, he found Hermione crying in a corridor, all curled up against herself, her pretty blue dress being used as a tissue for her snot and mascara, and they went off to have weird depression-sex.

(As if all their sex wasn't weird depression-sex.)

"May I sit? Or are you going to throw me against the wall too?" she asked severely but quietly, without any real aggression behind it, and sat down beside him before he even answered.

"Sorry," he mumbled, and then his eyes widened as he noticed a thin line of blood on Hermione's right calf.

His stomach rolled with nausea and disgust towards himself. "Shit. _Shit_! Did I... Did one of the plates hit your...?"

She flexed her leg as she observed the small affliction he couldn't tear his eyes away from, and shrugged. "It doesn't hurt, Harry."

But Harry could not take his eyes off that sliver of red, the physical consequence of his rashness, accusing him.

They sat in silence like that for a minute until Hermione finally rolled her eyes and rubbed the blood away with her palm. "There. Gone. Better?"

Absurdly, Harry found himself choking up.

Hermione was the only person he could cry in front of. It wasn't as if it was on purpose, it just naturally didn't happen around anyone else. But he sucked the tears up as soon as he noticed them blurring his vision, frankly a little mortified. Crying on kitchen floors was strictly reserved for children and girls. Men don't cry.

And even if his only real models of men came from an enigmatic old wizard hellbent on saving the world and a falsely imprisoned ex-con, he still counted as one.

"I'm really, really sorry," he repeated once he had gotten a hold of himself, painfully forcing back his spontaneous and unexpected grief, forcing back everything. "...And I don't actually think your kitchen is ugly."

"It's okay," she said thickly, and then gave him a quivery smile. "I keep telling Ron we should repaint the cabinets."

He let his head fall back as he breathed out a hollow little chuckle. "They're fine. Everything's fine."

Hermione stared at the moving photo in his hands for a while as Harry's eyelids started feeling heavier and heavier. After that surge of adrenalized fury left him, his body was remembering how much drink was in his system.

"I was so miserable that night," he heard her say. "It all just felt like a lie to me. Everything that I was saying and doing. Everything anyone said and did to me."

Harry wiped his nose with his sleeve and tried his best to keep up with the conversation, even though all he wanted was to keel over, lie down and stay down. "Yeah, me too."

"We look happy in the picture, at least." Hermione dropped her head hesitantly onto his shoulder. "Sometimes I wish I could live in pictures."

It was in that moment Harry realized why they were so alike now. That despite what she said, Hermione wasn't ready to move forward either. She was as stuck as he was; not fully regressing, no, but not progressing either. Like maybe this was it, this was as grown up and as childish as they could ever be. Maybe they'd been stunted.

They stayed sitting there together for a long time. It felt familiar, felt like how it was when they were hunting for Horcruxes, just the two of them. They had grown accustomed to hiding in cramped spaces, terrified to even breathe in case they might be heard. It should have made Harry have a similar episode as the one earlier at Auror training, this strong sense of déjà vu that made him feel like he was back to where he was just a short year and some change ago. Instead, it calmed him.

"I'm sorry about the other day," he slurred. "You know, when we — "

He felt her tense. "Harry, you don't have to — "

"No. I shouldn't have..." Harry took hold of her hand, traced one of her fingertips. "I shouldn't have asked you to say...that thing. That was wrong."

Hermione scooted closer to him. "I'm sorry too. I was mean. I think I'm meaner than I used to be. Can we just forget it, please?"

Harry pressed his lips to the top of her hair, deeply breathed in the sweet scent of her. "You're not mean."

Then they kissed, just once, chaste and proper-like, not even really sexual at all. He wasn't sure if he had leaned in first or her; all he knew was that her soft mouth was suddenly pressed against his, and because of that, everything seemed like it was going to be all right.

Harry had done almost everything on earth to her body and yet was somehow sated, tonight, with this kiss.

Before he went home, he wanted to tell her how much he appreciated her, how good of a friend she was, how he would be totally okay if they didn't ever have sex again, really, don't worry about it, that was his bad — but the words didn't come out, and he didn't know why.

_The hardest thing about life_, he thought sagely,_ is the not knowing. _Harry reckoned it was a very profound thought. And then he passed out, face down, in their neighbor's front yard.


	3. Public Indecency

_I fuck 'cause I need to  
I fuck when I want_

_..._

_I'll fucking digest you  
One kiss at a time  
You wish I was yours  
And I hope that you're mine._

"Lurk" - The Neighborhood

* * *

_Harry was back at Hogwarts, sitting in his potions class. Snape sneered and towered over him, wand pointed at his face. _

"_Look at you," he snarled, grip tightening on his wand. "Still a sniveling, simpering coward. You can't hide anything from me, Potter. I know _everything_." _

_Harry panicked and tried his hardest to flex his ability to perform Occlumency. He knew he was failing, just like always. His eyes narrowed at Snape and he gritted his teeth. _

"_Stay out of my head!" _

"_Harry!" wailed a female voice next to him. He looked and saw Lavender Brown, all big curls and smeared makeup, on her knees beside him. "Harry, where is Won-Won? I want my Won-Won! I'm so alone!" Her fingers clawed at his arm. _

_Harry's eyes widened, confused. "Lavender?" _

"_Dobby misses you, Harry Potter. Dobby would do anything for you." Dobby suddenly materialized on top of Harry's desk, and was looking at Harry with adoration on his face. "Why didn't Harry Potter save Dobby? Dobby saved Harry Potter."_

"_I'm_ — _I'm sorry, I couldn't do anything_ —_"_

"_Well, well. This is who you grew up to be, eh?" Fred frowned at him. Glared, more like. "What have you been getting up to with my little brother's girlfriend, then? This is how you repay him? Repay me?" _

_He was interrupted by Teddy Lupin's wailing. He screamed hysterically, an unending cry of pain. _

"_Self-righteous, impudent, stupid_ — _"_

"_I'm all alone! I hate this, I hate this!" _

"_Can't believe I died for you. And this is what you've become. Hope Georgie beats you bloody for me himself." _

"_Dobby didn't want to die, Harry Potter. Dobby didn't want to." _

_The bawling of an orphaned child. _

_Harry covered his ears with his hands and shut his eyes tightly, not knowing what else to do. As soon as he did, it went quiet. He looked up to see the figure of Dumbledore standing alone before him. _

_It was at that moment that Harry realized he could use his legs. He sprang forwards, going straight for Dumbledore's throat. _

"_You!" he shouted at his former headmaster, former mentor, former hero. Rage drove him forward, a kind of rage that could burn cities to ash. "You!" His hands tightened around Dumbledore's neck and he threw him against the wall. _

"_Harry, my boy," said Dumbledore, not at all hindered by the hands pressing down on his windpipe. "What is the matter?" _

"_You did this to me!" Harry yelled, feeling like his anger was the only thing that kept him from floating away. "I was a kid! You didn't_ _have to make this all so hard!" Harry sputtered a bit, voice catching from his tears. "It was so hard." _

_Dumbledore's eyes narrowed to slits. "I thought you could handle it, Harry. I hadn't factored the apparent weakness of your spirit. I apologize, then, for overestimating you. You _were _a child. And it looks as if you still are." _

_The words hit Harry like a barrage of arrows. He kept squeezing, wanting to make them stop, needing to. And then Dumbledore started to change. His white hair turned brown and curly, he shrank beneath Harry's grip into something feminine and soft. _

"_Go on then, Harry," Hermione said, bringing her hands up to meet his to encourage the murder at his fingertips. "Kill me or shag me. Only options. It doesn't matter, really. We'll all end up hating you regardless." _

"_It's true, mate." Ron came up behind him, followed by Ginny. "You're going to lose us all. All because you're a greedy prat." _

"_Pervert," agreed Ginny. _

_Despair. _

"_Please," begged Harry. "Please, don't." _

_Hermione took his face in her hands. Brought him close, like they were going to kiss. _

"_You did this to yourself." _

Harry woke up in a brush of bright yellow tulips, gasping for air. He trembled from the memory of his nightmare and clung desperately to the relief of reality. His stomach rolled as he tried to sit up, and his head hurt so badly he was afraid it might have split open. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. A white fence, a sunny day.

A couple staring at him in alarm.

A balding, portly man was holding his even portlier wife as they gaped at him, still in their pajamas and robes. Harry slowly got to his feet and brushed off his clothes, which were covered in dirt and grass.

"Harry Potter?" the man said, mouth hanging open.

"...Hello," Harry lilted, groggy and in pain. The couple stayed rooted to the spot.

"Erm," the large gentleman stuttered, his curiosity outweighing how star-struck he was, "Why are you in my garden?"

"Uh." Harry racked his brain. "Doing a bit of reconnaissance, for the Ministry, you understand. We're tracking down, um — Nargles."

"In my tulips?" the woman questioned, looking anxious and puzzled.

"We're being very thorough," said Harry, his head pounding. "But don't worry, the threat is cleared here, so...you'll be just fine." It wasn't the best lie he'd ever told. Not the worst, either.

He took off. "Thank you, Mr. Potter!" the man exclaimed behind him, and Harry waved without turning around, sure that he would vomit if he attempted such trickery as turning _and _waving.

He did, in fact, make it home before vomiting. Well, very nearly. The outside steps that once led the way to the sanctuary of the Order of the Phoenix, the old stomping grounds of his parents and all who fought for what was good and virtuous, was now covered in a mixture of Firewhisky and steak and kidney pie.

Harry stumbled inside and collapsed on the couch, not bothering with trying to make it to his bed. The cushions smelled like dust, which meant Kreacher was in a mood. The house-elf's emotional status could be tracked by the scents of Grimmauld Place; if he is feeling particularly spiteful, particularly amnesic about the lengths Harry has gone to repair their relationship, Grimmauld Place smells of grit and rot. Likewise, if Kreacher is feeling especially appreciated, especially magnanimous, it smells like Lysol and Christmas dinner.

"Is Master not feeling well?" Kreacher's sardonic voice was right by his ear, and Harry jumped in surprise.

"Just tired, Kreacher," Harry grumbled bitterly. He didn't want the house-elf to know he was hungover.

"I see," Kreacher replied. "I'll clean up the mess you made outside," then, under his breath, "Though it serves you right, mixing with Mudbloods and blood traitors, the shame of it, their stinking, vile, filthy — "

"KREACHER!" Harry managed to muster a shout.

"Kreacher didn't say anything, Master, no, not a thing…"

After cleaning up his sick, Kreacher went about cleaning the dishes in the kitchen in the loudest possible manner. He clanged dishes together and banged steel pots and pans roughly on counters and in cupboards. Every noise set Harry's teeth on edge and made his headache thump behind his eyelids.

"Kreacher," he groaned, "You can do that later!"

The banging stopped. "Yes, of course, Master. Kreacher lives to serve, he does, lives to serve…"

Harry flung his arm over his eyes to help block out the light and willed his brain to shut off and allow him some sleep, but he did what he always did after spending too much time with Hermione; he thought and thought and thought about how in love he was with Ginny.

This was, presumably, what they call a vicious cycle. After having sex with Hermione and hating himself, hating how it made him feel, the Ginny in his mind becomes twice as beautiful, three times funnier, and all around more perfect. Harry then sees her through rose-tinted glass for a while, and he's more into her than ever. That is, until she does something that doesn't quite fit the Ginny in his head; snaps a little too harshly, jokes on him a little too meanly, and he's startled. Unnerved. Lost. Craves Hermione again.

It was despicable of him, horrendous, and Harry knew that. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't seem to change this disturbed pattern of thinking. He was trapped in it, spinning round and round the centrifuge like a bauble on a string.

But sometimes the idealized version of Ginny lasted quite a while. The girl was damn near made in a lab just for him — she had everything he could ever ask for. Brave. Never cries. Gives him space. Same interests, same likes and dislikes, always takes the same perspective he does. Same sense of humor. Nice tits.

It was almost like she was too good to be true.

Harry hadn't even realized he had drifted off to sleep when the spark of Floo powder in his fireplace woke him up a few hours later.

"Harry!" Arthur Weasley's face peered out at him over the coals. Thinking that it was the most challenging thing he's ever had to do, Harry sat up to look at him.

"Mr. Weasley?"

"Oh, sorry to wake you, Harry, but, um, would you mind coming to the Burrow? Now, if you could? "

"Why? What's going on?"

Mr. Weasley's face looked...embarrassed? Worried? "It's — it's Ginny."

Harry jumped to his feet, which turned out to be a mistake. His head spun and he held onto the couch for support, nausea nearly overtaking him again. It was only through sheer force of will (And great concern for Ginny? Or was he just saying that to make himself feel better?) that he remained standing and drew his wand. "What's wrong? What's happened to her?"

Mr. Weasley tutted. "Oh, no, don't worry! It's nothing like that. It's just, well, she's...just come."

He disappeared. Harry immediately threw Floo powder into the fire and all but leaped into the green flames, shouting "The Burrow!"

Harry felt his stomach drop as he was whisked away, and he quickly jumped out of the Weasley's fireplace, adrenaline flooding his veins. The scene he came across shocked him.

And being Harry Potter, that was a difficult task for anything to do.

The Burrow was a disaster. Things were destroyed, blown to bits, shattered. George was holding back Ginny's arms as if stopping her from a fight, and she was screaming herself hoarse in his arms, her wand on the floor. It looked as if most of the abuse she spewed was being directed at Mrs. Weasley, and — had Ginny really drawn her wand on her own mother?

"How dare you! HOW DARE YOU? You think I'm still ten years old? You can control everything I do? Everything I think?"

Mrs. Weasley had tears dripping down her face, and she pointed her wand at her only daughter defensively. "Ginny, I didn't mean to suggest anything — "

"Like HELL you didn't! I know exactly what you were saying! Just like I knew what you were saying when you thought I was a slag at school!"

"I would _never_ call you that — "

"Oh, the humanity!" Ginny threw her head back against George's chest, pantomiming anguish. "The daughter of the angelic Molly Weasley — a common whore! What went wrong? Oh, what in Merlin's name went so wrong?"

Molly locked eyes with Harry, who hadn't moved a muscle throughout the exchange. Ginny followed her mother's stare and finally saw him as well. Her eyes lost their fervor when they connected with his, she stopped yelling, and went slack in George's arms. Arthur emerged from the corner and put his hand on Harry's shoulder.

"Harry's come to see you, Ginny." he said placatingly. Ginny's eyes narrowed at her father.

"Yes, Dad, I can see that, as I'm not blind or mentally deficient, shockingly enough." She shook herself free from George's arms and walked towards Harry, who still hadn't moved, genuinely frightened by his girlfriend. Wildly, he imagined this was how Hermione must have felt last night.

"Hi," said Ginny, forcing a smile so hard it looked like it hurt, and actually kissed Harry on the cheek. He flinched like she had struck him.

"Hey," he answered weakly, but she had already strode out the door. Harry followed after exchanging an ambiguous look with George, who looked like he hadn't slept in days. But that was kind of how he always looked now.

"I hate her," Ginny spat once they left the Burrow. Harry had taken her to walk on a path just outside of Hogsmeade, so they could be alone; _but not too alone_, he thought darkly, remembering the fit of violence she had left behind. She glowered at the ground and kicked stones that were in her way.

"No you don't," Harry replied. He also kicked a rock that had the audacity to exist beneath his shoe.

"Don't do that. Don't tell me how I feel," she snapped, rounding on him. He looked at her wearily. His head still hurt, and now that the adrenaline had faded, familiar apathy returned to settle in his bones.

"What happened, Gin?"

Ginny's mouth turned into a hard line. "She said that I ought to quit playing Quidditch after this year. Said that I should study up to be a _healer_ instead. A bloody healer!" She kicked a rock with extra force. "I'm a Quidditch player! That's what I do, it's what I love! I told her that, and she goes, she goes — 'The aggression isn't good for you, young lady! Enough is enough!'" Ginny snorted. "Aggression. What a load of rubbish. What she's actually saying is, 'Ginny, dear, why don't you just settle down, already? Focus on learning how to cook, on how to pop out babies, that's what'll make you happy, if you'd be just like me!'"

She scowled at the face of the woman that wasn't even there. Harry tried to think of something comforting to say, something to appease her, but he still thought that she had overreacted. And he was out of practice; Ginny never really came to him with stuff like this, talk of her feeling sensitive or hurt or...anything. She was mostly just easygoing, all the time, or at least pretended to be. Maybe not right after Fred died, but back then, Harry had kind of checked out altogether.

God. Voldemort could've been a better boyfriend than he was.

Thinking about Voldemort made Harry think about his nightmare, and his mind drifted. Nightmares weren't something foreign to Harry, but that one lingered in his mind, was branded there. What bothered him most was his reaction to Dumbledore, the raw anger that even now he could feel breathing in his chest, waiting to be released. Harry had come to peace with Dumbledore, hadn't he?

_Maybe I should tell Hermione about it_, Harry thought, shuffling his feet. _Might leave out a detail or two though…_

"Harry? Are you listening?"

Oh, right, Ginny was still talking. At this rate, Harry had Worst Boyfriend of All Time in the bag.

"Yeah. Yeah, of course," he said, taking her hand. "Just, erm, you got to remember that your mum loves you and...yeah. She just worries."

She slid her hand out of his with a sour expression. "Whatever. Forget it. Let's talk about something else. Or we could go flying? I haven't practiced in a couple days. Or we could go get a drink, meet up with some friends, go for some curry, make a night of it..." Ginny was speaking very quickly, her eyes bouncing around towards Hogsmeade as if her plan was already in action and she was missing it.

Harry blinked. "Ginny...I have to ask. Did you pull your wand out while you were arguing? Were you actually going to hex your mum?"

It was like he could see her face crumble under the weight of his question. "No, I wouldn't I…" Ginny bit her lip, scratched at her arm. "I honestly don't know. I completely lost it, I just...I lost it."

Harry looked down, feeling disappointed in her. He was such a hypocrite.

"It's just," Ginny continued, her flaming hair falling over her face, "whenever I feel like someone's trying to control me, something just snaps. And I know it's awful, but after Voldemort possessed me…"

She trailed off and stared into the beginnings of the sunset, splashing gold and warmth across her alabaster skin. Harry stared at her long lashes casting shadows under her eyes, at the sleek tendrils of her hair blown backwards by the breeze, seemingly on purpose, as if she commanded nature to better enhance her aesthetic, and wondered if it were actually possible that Ginny was as beautiful as he thought she was.

Her eyes burned with smothered, molten anger. "After Voldemort possessed me I swore to myself I'd never let that happen again. I'd sooner die than not be in complete control of myself. I'd rather bleed and suffer and die."

Harry drew her into an embrace even though half of him wanted to push her away. Sometimes he and Ginny were just too bloody similar.

Of course, having a partner who's so much like you isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As long as you don't hate yourself.

She pulled away and smiled at him tightly, eyes dry. Harry thought Hermione would have cried, if she had been in Ginny's place at this moment. Her tears would catch briefly on her feathery eyelashes before sliding down her cheeks, and Harry would look away, look down, look anywhere else because he never knew what to do with crying girls or with crying in general because crying was never allowed for him, not even when he was a child; he was raised not to cry, never cry, get into the cupboard now stay silent and if you're hungry that's too damn bad we don't owe you anything stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about stop crying you ugly little worthless nothing stop crying stop crying stop —

"Blegh, let's stop talking about serious stuff," Ginny said with a shake of her head, breaking him of his reverie. "Butterbeer? Yes? No? Yes? Yes? _YES_?"

"Yes," Harry said with a rather poor excuse for a laugh, but she was already turning back to follow the road to Hogsmeade. Harry silently trailed after her and blinked away tears that were not there.

By the time they entered the bustling streets of Hogsmeade Harry realized the last meal he ate ended up on his doorstep, so he and Ginny decided on The Three Broomsticks for an early dinner. The walk there was a bit awkward and halting, as people would constantly want to stop the two for autographs and tearful expressions of their gratitude. Women would sometimes brake mid-step and stare open-mouthed, or giggle with nervousness, maybe even blow Harry a kiss, which Ginny always found funny. Men would stare at Ginny, then, realization dawning on their faces, turn to gawp at Harry. Then go back to stare at Ginny again. Harry never found that funny.

A small crowd of people had started to follow them as they neared the pub, though, so Ginny took his hand and just started running. She laughed over her shoulder as an assortment of fans and paparazzi realized they'd been spotted and the chase was on; behind an alley, over a fence, through a bush and back over the fence they went, Harry wearily dragging behind Ginny and slowing her down just enough to make it more difficult for her (and if that's some kind of metaphor for their relationship Harry didn't have the know-how or desire to analyze it).

"Why didn't we just Disapparate?" he asked irritably once they had given their quasi-fan club the slip and had arrived at their desired destination.

"Where's the fun in that?" she grinned back, catching her breath and kicking open the doors to The Three Broomsticks in triumph.

Her answer weirdly shocked him. Because, yeah, okay, maybe that should have been fun; he could definitely see how that could be fun.

It wasn't though. It was just tiring.

He wracked his brains and tried to recall the last time he had had "fun." Maybe he was just too old for it?

Because that's part of growing up, isn't it? Understanding that everything is just an expenditure of energy, nothing more and nothing less. Energy in, energy out; and try not to mess up too much in the middle.

Or maybe he was just being depressive again.

Still deep in thought, Harry ducked his head before going inside the pub, trying not to attract any more attention. But he still caught a glimpse of familiar curly hair in his peripherals and looked up to see Hermione settle into a booth with Ron on the opposite side of her, two waters in hand.

_Don't see them, don't see them, please don't see them_—

"Hermione!" Ginny exclaimed, gliding cheerfully to their table in the corner. Harry walked stiffly behind her, cursing under his breath but at least grateful they were seated away from everyone else.

Hermione looked up and smiled at Ginny in recognition, and then did the same at him but the smile was different, somehow, and it made something strange and warm burst in his chest.

"Damn. My brother's here too. I was hoping you were having an affair and Harry and I could talk to someone interesting for a change," Ginny joked. Hermione laughed too hard and Harry's body went cold.

"Watch it, Gin. I've made you eat mud once and I can do it again," Ron threatened, though his words didn't have much impact since he looked so miserable. His eyes were bloodshot and he was resting his head on his arm as if he couldn't possibly hold it up himself.

"Oh, shove over. You look like warmed over Manticore dung, by the way," Ginny sniffed. Harry took the space beside Hermione and was weirdly self conscious about himself beside her, like he was taking up too much space somehow. Wished he could shrink.

"Well, you look sweaty, so there," Ron grumbled back, and flicked her with water, much to Hermione's displeasure.

"Goodness' sake, Ronald, we're in _public_—"

But before she could properly rip into him, a no-nonsense, painfully thin waitress approached the table, a tray floating dangerously behind her, piled with plates of greasy bar food.

"'Ello, I'm Priscilla, I'll be your server today," she said monotonously to her pad, not smiling, though Harry recognized her so he knew a severe change in disposition was coming soon. "What can I get you lot started with?"

"Some sausage and chips for me," said Harry, and then, noting the hollowness in his stomach, "Extra chips." (Energy in).

Ginny leaned forward, "I'll just have the—"

"Oh—! 'Arry Potter!" Priscilla suddenly exclaimed after recognizing his voice, snapping her neck up. "It's really wonderful to see you again, sir! Thank you so, so much for comin' by, but we could 'ave set you up with a VIP table if you wanted, you know, in the back, bit quieter, bit _cleaner_, eh? Someone's there now, but it's just some tart from the Daily Prophet and I can get 'er out of 'ere in no time at all, believe you me."

Harry faked a smile while shaking his head no, don't bother, we're fine here, and Ginny cleared her throat. "And _I'll _have—"

"I mean, who _wouldn't _give up their table for 'Arry bloomin' Potter, righ'?" she laughed, her body turned entirely to an increasingly uncomfortable Harry and no one else. "My other mates are gonna be _so _jealous when I tell them I served _the_ 'Arry Potter _again_; oh they're gonna _die_ —"

Out of nowhere, Priscilla's blouse was suddenly drenched in ice water.

She gave a shriek and jumped, her eyes darting around to find the culprit as the teetering plates behind her very nearly toppled to the ground.

Ginny's eyes were big and feigning innocence as she set Ron's glassware upright again. "Merlin, I am _such _a klutz! So sorry, sweetness. While you're cleaning up, though, mind getting another order of sausage and chips for me? Really appreciate it."

Priscilla was positively shaking with rage while Ron laughed into his palm, and even Hermione was guiltily swallowing her lips to keep from giggling at Ginny's performance.

Harry felt so disconnected from them all.

He pulled out his wand and spelled her shirt dry, just wanting this whole ordeal over with. (Energy out). "Sorry."

No longer soiled, the waitress softened, and stared at Harry with somehow even more adoration. "You're just — you're too kind, thank you. I'll just — just take everyone's order now."

"Fabulous idea!" Ginny smiled. "I'll have a butterbeer as well. You want one, Harry?"

Harry eyed her, not sure how to feel. "Yeah, sure."

"Are you _quite_ certain you want butterbeer, Harry?" asked Hermione, glancing purposefully at Ron and then back. Ron's ears turned pink and he stared gloomily at the wall.

"Yes, I am _certain_, Hermione." Harry said severely, perhaps a bit too severely, but he was annoyed with Ginny and _furious_ with Hermione because he couldn't decide which of the two had disappointed him more, and maybe it wasn't disappointment he was feeling but if it wasn't disappointment it was something worse, something like, like, _exclusion_; and because, well, she really didn't have to embarrass Ron like that.

Call it the last vestiges of loyalty to his best male friend.

"Ron? Do you want some butterbeer too? First round's on me," he said recklessly, feeling the need to challenge someone and for whatever reason, it was always more satisfying to do it to Hermione. In fact, the need to show her up was so strong right then he could scarcely understand it.

She'd always been just a little too easy to get mad at, even growing up.

Ron looked at Hermione and grimaced. "Nah, that's okay — "

"Thank you for your unwelcome generosity, Harry," Hermione said through clenched teeth. "But Ron and I are perfectly fine."

"Really?" He put his elbows on the table and set a hard gaze on her. "'Cause you seem pretty uptight to me."

Ron, Ginny and the waitress all pulled similar "yikes" faces. Harry could feel waves of tension rolling off Hermione, and he knew he was exuding the same as they silently glared at each other.

"I could come back..." Priscilla said, taking a step backward, but Hermione clasped her hands together and plastered a smile to her face.

"No need! We've already ordered," Hermione said crisply. "Two butterbeers, and only two butterbeers."

"And twelve whiskeys!" Ginny quipped, struggling to keep the grin off her face.

Hermione bristled. "Ginny, that is _not _funny—"

"Blimey, can we stop fighting and just have a nice dinner? Please?" Ron begged. "We're all hungry, and crabby, so let's just, wait for our food, and eat like normal humans. Sound good?"

There was a murmur of agreement; food was ordered, Priscilla was shuffled away, Ginny apologized, and Hermione apologized for making her apologize.

Harry didn't feel the need to.

He could feel Hermione glaring at him, but he refused to look at her and preoccupied himself with other things. Important things, like fidgeting with his napkin and watching the precipitation build and drip off of his water glass.

"So did you and Ginny have a nice day?" Hermione asked primly, turning towards the table after realizing Harry had no intentions of looking at her the rest of the night. "Do anything fun?"

Ginny had the good grace to look uneasy. "Um. Not really. Harry came in while me and mum were having...a spat."

"Ugh, what were you two fighting about now?" Ron groaned. "I hate it when your guys' cycles link up or whatever."

"Our cycles are not linked, you moron!" Ginny retorted. "She was just being controlling. As usual."

"Well, Ron and I had a very nice day," Hermione cut in before Ron could reply, a little too loudly. A suggestive smile crossed her lips as she took a sip of water. "_Very _nice, if you know what I mean."

Ron and Ginny simultaneously choked while a vein in Harry's forehead that he had not known existed before now began pulsing in overdrive.

"Aaaaand there goes my appetite," Ginny laughed, and then concluded by making gagging noises.

"Yeah, we're about to eat, Hermione," Harry said in a constricted voice, wanting to say a _lot _more but not trusting himself to. "Don't be gross."

The fact that she would go so far just to get a rise out of him was so..._disturbing__._

But damn it if he wasn't just a little bit impressed as well.

"Uh, thanks for calling me gross, twat," Ron chuckled, but his face and neck had turned an embarrassed shade of red, belying his laid-back response.

Regardless of what they all got up to in the privacy of their own bedrooms, they were all still distinctly British about talking about sex in the light of day. Especially when they were all mixed up in each other's lives like this; things could easily turn...incest-adjacent.

"It's weird. We shouldn't talk about stuff like that," Harry said gruffly to Hermione.

Hermione shrugged. "Don't see why not. It's not exactly the 40's anymore, is it? Surely we're all sexually liberated enough to discuss it without shame or judgment. It should be...meritorious."

"Hear, hear!" Ginny cheers-ed.

"Fuck no!" Ron cringed.

Everyone but Harry laughed and moved on; began discussing trivial subjects that were forgotten as soon as they were said, but Harry kept finding himself losing track of the conversation and just staring at Hermione, as surreptitiously as he could. The lack of connection frustrated him. She had, however, dropped the glaring and the needling and was now ignoring him. Steadfastly, resolutely.

The blackballing stretched on into the evening and Harry found himself growing more and more cross with her. He just wanted her to _look_ at him. That was it! They had ended things on a pretty good note the night before. Sure, he broke some of her plates and had a bit of a meltdown in her kitchen, but in his defense, they really were some ugly plates.

And they had kissed. It was nice. Nice enough that he deserved to be spoken to. Looked at. Nice enough that she shouldn't have been vindictive enough to bring up _sex _with _Ron_.

_This is so typical Hermione_, Harry thought, chewing angrily at an ice cube. This is why he had to give her the silent treatment so frequently back at Hogwarts. No one on _earth _could push his buttons the way Hermione could. It was like she knew exactly how his brain worked, knew exactly where to poke and wheedle so that he felt so betrayed and resentful that he couldn't even think straight anymore.

This — _this_ is why he and Hermione could never work above anything besides physical release. Harry couldn't keep up with her head games; she was too good at it, far better than him. It was an uneven playing field.

The food came and Harry dug in, hoping a bit of nourishment was what he needed to get his pissiness levels down. (Energy in).

He took a long sip of the frothy and sweet beverage but it stuck a bit in his throat when he caught Ron eyeing it enviously. Harry wondered if he himself was noble enough to give up drinking for Hermione, then reminded himself he'd never have to know the answer because it was entirely hypothetical. Entirely.

Ron was trying not to stare at Harry's drink and Harry was trying not to stare at Hermione and Ginny was trying not to stare at Harry staring at Hermione and Harry wondered if this was all life was as adults. The cyclicality of envy and misplaced anger.

"Harry, what's up?" Ginny whispered to him, pointlessly, since everyone could hear. "You've been oddly...quiet."

"I was just hungry," he answered, and to prove it, he quickly swooped down for another chip and inadvertently dipped the side of his hand in ketchup.

Ginny gave a quiet snort of laughter and Harry felt itchy with embarrassment.

"Can I get a napkin, Hermione?" he asked her, as she was the closest one to them.

She just stared into her glass of water, took a very long sip and made no movements to suggest she had heard his request.

Hermione could be such a dick sometimes.

"Uhh, Hermione?" Ron questioned, catching her eye. "Napkin? Harry?"

Her eyes widened at him. "Oh? I didn't hear."

With a flourish, Hermione grabbed a napkin and tossed it in Harry's direction, still without looking at him.

Okay. That was the last straw.

"Can I talk to you?" he murmured in her ear the first chance he could without Ron and Ginny hearing.

Hermione took a moment to admire her cuticles in an exaggerated fashion, and then daintily nibbled on a chip.

You can't say he didn't give her an out.

He rested his left hand on her knee, and felt her jump a little at his touch. She still refused to look at him, but Harry started to feel a stirring of excitement. He knew that Hermione knew if she just glanced at him he would stop.

He wanted to know how far she would let this go.

"Did you guys hear about the Turkey and Portugal match yesterday? Canan is brutal, heard she broke Barros' arm in three places." Harry said. His hand on Hermione's knee slowly inched upwards, pressed softly against the smooth skin of her leg.

"Barros is a wimp," Ginny replied, unimpressed. "A gently tossed feather could break his nose."

"I wouldn't go up against Canan, though," remarked Ron. "Built like a stack of bricks, that girl."

Harry's hand traveled further up Hermione's skirt now, and he smirked at her attempts to regulate her breathing. He wasn't entirely sure why he was taking such a risk just to get her back for ignoring him, but once he started it was like he couldn't stop. He stroked the soft flesh of her inner thigh, and the closer he got to her core, the more her legs opened for him whorishly. Harry had to suppress a moan at that. It was Hermione playing the game back; she knows what that does to him.

"Do you think Turkey could make it to the finals in the next World Cup?" Harry asked, voice slightly strangled, not really caring about their answer because his fingers just touched the edges of Hermione's cotton knickers and he leaned back for a better angle to touch her.

Ginny and Ron made incredulous noises. "Doubt it," said Ron, finally able to steal one of Ginny's chips. "Not with Krum playing for Bulgaria."

"And with me —" interrupted Ginny, banging her drink down with force, "playing for England after I graduate. Assuming I make the team, of course."

Harry slipped his fingers under her knickers and pressed them against her cunt. She was already wet, and it made Harry want to groan aloud, bend her over the table and take her in front of everyone. He tried to control his facial expressions as he stroked up her slit slowly, just teasing, wanting to make her yearn for his touch.

"You'll make it, Gin," Harry said, feeling a tightening in his pants. "I swear you get better every day."

Ginny beamed at him and went back to eating. "I'm so excited to get back once this break ends. You're coming to my next game, right?"

Harry nodded and pinched Hermione's clit, rolling it between his thumb and index finger. Hermione's face was flushed and her breathing grew ragged, to his great satisfaction.

"Force Hermione to come too," she said, eyeing Hermione and pointing an accusatory sausage at her. "She never comes to matches."

Harry didn't stop his torturous movements under her skirt, and Hermione gripped the table so tightly her knuckles turned white. Clearing her throat, she said, "Sorry. Just been busy."

Ron rolled his eyes. "The only person in the world who likes homework over Quidditch, and I'm marrying her. That's gotta be a paradox or a metaphor, or something."

"Actually, Ron — " Hermione started correcting before Harry slipped two fingers inside her and rubbed, hard, against the rough patch of flesh that made more wetness gush onto his digits — "it's, ah, ahh, it's irony."

Ron looked at her curiously. "You all right, Hermione?"

Hermione certainly did not look alright. Harry eased off a bit, liking the danger but not to a suicidal degree, and looked at her innocently. His face was full of concern but he knew his eyes were a mixture of amusement and lust.

She stared back at him, her gaze dark, and he realized she was too far gone. She bit her lip and he felt her clench around his fingers as she came, arching into his hand. Harry knew he was staring at her too intensely but couldn't help it; he swallowed hard and watched her come down from her pleasure, admired the blush that splashed her cheeks and breasts in rose. He slowly removed his fingers, mourning the loss of her tightness around him. When he wiped his fingers off on her skirt, her breath hitched.

"Actually, I think I need some air," she said shakily, and stood. Harry moved out of the way so she could leave the booth.

"I'll join you," he said, and she barely glanced at him before making her way to the door.

"Oi, I'm not paying for all this!" Ron called after them, and Harry just waved him off.

Cold air filled Harry's lungs and he followed Hermione as she walked steadily across sidewalk. She turned into an alley and Harry felt a thrill shudder through him. He was still hard.

She pulled him into the shadows.

"_Lumos_," she whispered, so that they could see each other in the icy light of her wand. She didn't look happy, but Harry smiled at her anyways. He didn't know which of them had won, but he was fairly sure he was about to get off in a few moments, which was a reason to smile in itself.

"Have you officially gone mad?" she asked him, loud enough to convey anger but not attract any onlookers. "What was that?"

Harry placed his hand on her neck, caressed her jaw with his thumb, lowered his head to hers. "You weren't looking at me," he said softly into her ear.

"That's a..." His teeth just barely scraped against Hermione's earlobe and she shivered. "That's a rubbish answer."

He brushed his lips against the corner of her toffee-colored mouth. "I really, really wanted to talk."

"You were such a prat in there," she breathed as his hands moved over her form, got her body buzzing.

"You were a bigger one," Harry murmured against the base of her throat.

This whole time, they both might have just been playing the world's most destructive game of _I know you are but what am_ _I_?

He pressed his body against hers and felt her heart beat against his. An erratic, staccato rhythm; hot, fast, loud, alive, _alive. _Harry didn't know how she did it, how Hermione could irritate the hell out of him and then make him need her, need to touch and shag her just because it was the only certain way he could still feel like he was among the living, still feel present, still feel like a whole person.

She ground her hips into his and Harry hissed at the contact of pressure against his dick, sending goosebumps down his spine.

"You are immature. And rude." Hermione said, somehow still making the insults cut through him with her hand rubbing the front of his pants.

Goddammit, _fuck _— _her _— in every sense of the word.

"You are petty," he bit down on her neck, made her gasp. "And controlling."

His words just made her more aggressive, more tactile, and he quickly started moaning, needed to be inside her, about to flip up her skirt and tear down her knickers, but Hermione suddenly grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled, forcing him inches away from her face. Her eyes narrowed.

"And this what you wanted to 'talk' to me about?"

Harry paused for a minute, thinking. What did he want to talk with her about?

He wanted to figure her out. Wanted to un-weave the web of her thoughts, untangle the knots and crack the riddle of her. Undo her before she undid him.

And the closest thing to saying that was: "I want to take you on a date."

Hermione released him, and then gaped with over-large eyes as if he had sprouted another head. "You're joking. What does that even mean?"

"You know. A date. Dinner, drinks."

"I don't drink."

"Dancing."

"You're terrible at dancing."

"We'll play games."

"I hate games."

"_Hermione_," he brought his hands to her waist and his lips to her collar. "Just...humor me for once."

She was hesitant to his words but immediate to his mouth, and she tilted her head back so his tongue could reach the spot between her neck and her ear that always made her moan. "Fine. It's a terrible idea," she said breathlessly, kissing him fully on the mouth, and then biting his lip so that he hissed from the pain while simultaneously moaning for more, "but we'll have a date. This first, though."

Hermione worked away the buttons on his pants with shaky fingers until he raised her arms above her head, against the brick wall. "Yeah," he said huskily, pulling himself free and pushing her knickers out of the way. The crispness of the air, the murkiness of the alley, the possibility that someone, anyone, might stumble across them and catch them doing this just made it better, made Harry feel invincible and degenerate and deliciously fucked up. He pressed into her cunt, still sticky and hot and oh god yes right _there_, and she spasmed and whined when he closed his mouth around her clothed nipple and suckled it. "This first."

(Energy out).

* * *

A/N: I know I said I was gonna only make this story three chapters but I keep getting new ideas SO it's gonna be longer than that because I have no restraint. I just love these two. And thank you to everyone who's read/reviewed this I literally squeal every time I get new feedback and I appreciate every message, good or bad. xoxo


	4. Jesus Christ, That's a Pretty Face

_Oh, you wouldn't want an angel watching over  
Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch  
Another un-innocent, elegant fall  
Into the un-magnificent lives of adults._

"Mistaken for Strangers" - The National

* * *

Harry was in a nearly, comparatively, relatively good mood.

A true good mood was a novel gift of a feeling. Since the war ended, he'd of course experience sporadic bouts of happiness, fleeting moments of serenity or even short stretches of contentment. But a good mood is something else entirely; it signifies hope, a day where nothing he did could turn sour. Today was his date with Hermione, and the two events were probably, definitely linked.

But he was still himself, of course, and Hermione was still herself, which is why it was only _nearly _a good mood. In the good mood ballpark, if you will. Which still wasn't half bad.

They opted for a lunch date. Not markedly sexy in Harry's mind, but it was the only time and day they could slip out for an entire afternoon, just the two of them. The Weasleys were having a family reunion, and the Burrow would be jam-packed with boisterous redheads and treacle tarts and meat pies and raunchy jokes until sundown and beyond.

Normally, Harry would never want to miss such a joyful, well-fed event. But he chose Hermione over the Weasleys, again. (He did not dwell on this fact for long, lest he exit the Good Mood Ballpark and roll towards the piss-stained Angst Alley round the corner). Hermione told Ron that she absolutely _had _to run errands that day because she was going to be staying with her parents in Muggle Ireland before returning to Hogwarts and Harry _had _to come with her because maneuvering Gringotts and Muggle Customs would be an absolute nightmare without his influence speeding the process, now that Apparating directly into Muggle areas needed proper clearance and screenings. (Hermione had actually sorted this all out weeks ago).

Ron and Ginny, of course, understood and bore no grudge.

This was also the last weekend before the end of Easter break, so Harry would be seeing much less of both Hermione and Ginny when they returned to Hogwarts. He tried not to focus on this fact upon his arrival to Hermione and Ron's flat. As he walked up to the impossibly high, brown cobblestone apartments, a bouquet of bright blue carnations mingled with baby's breath in his hands, he waved to their neighbor whose front garden he had previously passed out in. The portly man's eyes bugged out of his head as he stared at Harry through his window, and he sprung up his arm in salute. Feeling awkward, Harry returned it quickly, and then hurried on, wishing he hadn't.

He stepped into the steel grates of the lift, and a female voice squawked over him. "Residence?"

"Granger and Weasley, please."

The lift whooshed into action, barreling upwards so quickly Harry nearly squashed the flowers as he careened into the doors. He arrived promptly to their door, and rapped his knuckles on the scarlet wood.

When Hermione opened the door, Harry felt like a bright light was being shined in his face. A slight blush highlighted the charming contours of her cheekbones, and her curls were coiled, smoother than usual, and framing her face that seemed more vibrant than he'd seen it before. She wore a deep violet sundress with a low-cut neckline that hugged her waist and floated to just above her knees, showing just a hint of her thighs. Her lips were painted a light cherry color and Harry wondered if he could ever bear to stop looking at them.

"Are those for me?" she asked, smiling, suddenly shy. Harry blinked and grinned back.

"Oh, yeah, um, bit of an impulse buy, really. The florist said that, um, these particular flowers were symbols of both great beauty and intelligence, so, I thought they'd be fitting for you. He was probably just talking rubbish to get a sale, but — erm, they're still nice, I think." He couldn't believe he was nervous.

Hermione took the flowers and gave them a jocular little sniff, followed by an appreciative smile. "They're beautiful, Harry, thank you so much."

"Oh, yeah, you're welcome."

They were both on their very best behavior, and Harry wondered how long it would last before they reverted back to their normal selves. His clothes suddenly felt sticky and wrong, like he was playing dress-up.

"I'll find somewhere to hide them when I get back," Hermione said briskly as she pulled out her wand and magicked the bouquet out of sight.

Harry bit the inside of his cheek, crestfallen. "Of course. Sorry, I wasn't thinking."

Her eyes widened. "Don't apologize! They're great, really. It's just...you know."

Harry nodded. He did know.

"Shall we go?" he said, holding out his arm. She took it and smiled, and they walked into the finicky lift to be whisked away.

He brought her into Diagon Alley first, but didn't tell her where they were going, to Hermione's great annoyance.

"Honestly, Harry," she huffed while he pulled her along quickly, not wanting to linger as to avoid being stopped by throngs of sycophantic strangers, "It's absolutely ridiculous you won't tell me our destination, I had no idea what I was meant to wear! I changed three times out of worry."

He beamed at her. "You're perfect."

She couldn't fight her lips from curling into a smile.

But when they reached the doors of the Leaky Cauldron, however, Hermione frowned, forehead creased in puzzlement.

"You're taking me here?"

Harry grinned. "Just a detour."

He walked quickly to the back, ignoring the stares from the pub's occupants, and tapped on a particular brick. At his touch, the wall reformed into a doorway.

Harry winked at her. "Let's go be Muggles for a day."

It had been quite some time since Harry had entered the Muggle world, really entered it, and he worried that perhaps it would take him some time to acclimate. But the sight of cars whizzing by on wheels and not magic, men and women in suits chattering into gray cell phones and electricity coursing through the unsightly power lines was so familiar it was as if he never left. While it might not be as picturesque as the world he now called home, it did have one thing that the Wizarding World did not.

People who didn't stare.

Harry had almost forgotten what it felt like to be out in public without blatant, suffocating scrutiny. He felt buoyant, reckless, and grasped Hermione's hand in his own. She looked down at their intermingling fingers in disbelief, and then looked up at him, smiling broadly. They walked off, hand in hand, and let the spring sunshine fill them up.

They got on a bus, an actual bus that didn't squeeze itself around corners or make anyone vomit; Harry felt like it had been decades since he had moved so slowly. But it dutifully chugged along until Harry pulled the line and arrived around the corner of a cineplex. Hermione looked up in delight as it instantly clicked.

"We're going to see a film?" she said, voice bright. "Oh, Harry! It _has _been a while. What are we seeing?"

"Something called _Star Wars_," Harry responded, looking at the blinking lights on the marquee to be sure. Harry had extremely limited knowledge of Muggle forms of entertainment, seeing as the Dursleys were never particularly keen on taking him for a bit of fun out on the town, to put it mildly. "It was the closest one playing at this time."

Hermione pulled a face. "Hmm. All right, I'll give it a chance, I suppose. Although I think I would have preferred something a bit more academic."

Harry chuckled as they reached the front of the line. "Two tickets to _Star Wars,_ please," he said.

The teenager working the booth's eyes lit up. "Ace!" he exclaimed. "Most people take their dates to see _Notting Hill_ or summin'. Total bollocks. Ewan McGregor's the best, am I right?"

Harry stared blankly at him, not knowing what a You-win Mickgreggor was.

"Yeah, she's our favorite actress," Hermione said confidently. The teenager looked away uncomfortably and rang up the prices.

"...That'll be eleven quid, fifty."

Harry actually quite enjoyed the movie, although some parts he had some difficulties watching. He found himself turning his head whenever the Sith Lord came on screen or, oddly, whenever the camera lingered on Anakin Skywalker for too long. A couple things just hit a bit too close to home, he supposed. He spent a lot of the time staring at Hermione, who seemed rather drawn in by the film, although a tad disapproving at times.

"I mean _honestly," _she tutted every so often when things got a bit too fantastical for her. "They're just making up rules of physical property as they go along. Harry, you see that that's absurd, don't you? Gamp's Law clearly states — "

Harry quieted her with a kiss; slow, languid, and she was much more content for the rest of the film.

They stopped for a late lunch and coffee at an Italian restaurant called Agostino's, its ambiance inviting and savory. There was a single lit candle at every ivory table-clothed booth and twinkling lights were draped across the walls, interlacing with a massive wine rack of vintage reds. The place was only half filled so it was still fairly quiet, and Harry could hear the faint melody of violin music chirping through speakers. They ordered their food off of laminated menus and Harry was greatly amused to see Hermione struggle with eating her spaghetti once it was served.

"Why don't they cut these damn noodles?" she complained. "How is anyone meant to consume these monstrosities?"

"It's traditional," Harry smiled, taking a bite of his ravioli. But his smile fell away as he continued to stare at her, her face going determined and annoyed, and the realization of how weird this all was finally dawned on him.

Sex with Hermione, in the dark, feeling like shit about it, okay. Understandable. It was what he needed to do to feel something after all his senses numbed over; he had been inert, underwhelmed by the sheer malaise of his life. Depression, possibly, but that didn't feel like the right word for it. More likely, it was just another of those nasty consequences from fulfilling a prophecy and murdering a Dark Lord in such developmental years. He probably had just gone stale, his purpose fulfilled, existence no longer necessary. Them's the breaks.

But now, it was in the light of day, and he and Hermione were in a bloody _restaurant, _as if they were normal people with nothing to be ashamed of. It was distasteful of them, foul. He blamed Hermione for agreeing to it, his no-longer-moral guide.

Harry looked around and saw another young couple, holding hands under the table. Neither were very attractive, the bloke with a greasy wisp of a mustache and the girl with a pimply chin, and they were gazing at each other too mawkishly for his taste, but you couldn't deny that they were clearly, effortlessly in love. A few tables to the right of them was an older couple, probably mid-forties, straight-backed and mundane. They ate their meal in steady silence, staring at the food and only the food. They might as well have been eating alone.

He was dying to know what he and Hermione looked like. Did they look ordinary, mushy, or bored? The three descriptors of a relationship: trite, gross, or doomed.

"Are you okay?" Hermione's voice made his skin feel itchy, like the sun streaking in through the smudged windows was turning him pink with burn. The restaurant that had been quaint and charming to him a few minutes ago was now showing its defects, like a heavily made-up woman shoved beneath harsh fluorescent lighting; a small spider's web weaved in a corner of the roof, one of the bulbs on the twinkle lights had gone out, the wine bottles furthest from the bottom had dust on the necks. Harry felt like he was encased in plastic disguised as authenticity, the worst kind of lie.

"I'm fine," he said on reflex.

Hermione smiled a little. "People always ask that, don't they? And they never expect a real answer. Sometimes when people at school ask me if I'm okay, I want to actually tell them no, and list every single thing wrong with me."

Harry nodded, mouth tasting slightly less like bile. "That's how to win friends."

The corner of her mouth turned up. "I have night terrors! Can I copy your Charms notes?"

He laughed, actually laughed in response. "Three times this year I've gotten so anxious I've thrown up. Pass the marmalade?"

"Sometimes I can't even get out of bed in the morning. Let's head back to the party."

"I'm shagging my best friend's fiancé! Now, let's meet that new girlfriend of yours."

Hermione's chuckling quieted and her smile cracked. "Yes, that should go swimmingly."

There was a pause.

"No, then," Harry said abruptly. "To answer your question. I don't think I'm fine."

His answer seemed redundant.

Still smiling, as if she had forgotten how to stop, Hermione nodded and said, "Same. I don't think anything's fine."

She picked at her noodles, and they both went quiet again, but it wasn't a suffocating quiet, or even a bored quiet like the older couple nearby. It was just familiar. Neither sentimental nor ominous.

"I miss talking to you," Harry said suddenly. He was on a roll with the bluntness.

"We talk all the time."

He shook his head. "Not really. I mean we do...stuff. But it's not like it was before, back at school."

Hermione shrugged. "Well, we were always trying to fight Voldemort and the Ministry and Death Eaters and miscellaneous evil at school. But now, we don't have that, and it's just...small talk. It feels like every conversation I have now is small talk."

Harry could feel himself grinning. "Isn't it bloody horrible?"

"It's like I can feel my brain rotting," Hermione laughed, and then her eyes went big, and she quickly added, "Not that I'm saying I want Voldemort back or anything."

"No, course not," he agreed.

"It's just..." she popped another meatball in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. "It's like I've been on a vacation that just won't end. Everything is so _dull_. Even now, I don't know what what we're supposed to do here. What do people even talk about? The weather? Is that what all these people are talking about? I'd rather swallow glass. And every day I'm in school and look around at everyone talking about the food or their boyfriends or Potions class or _whatever_, and I want to just scream and shake them all because—because—"

"Because people died," Harry finished.

"Because people died," she repeated solemnly. "So what else is there to talk about?"

Harry looked over at the unattractive young people at the table nearby and had to swallow his lips to keep from laughing. "Maybe we should talk about what they're talking about," he said with a furtive point. The girl was stroking the boy's oily face, while his socked foot was steadily sneaking up her leg.

Hermione pretended to scratch her neck to look behind her and then whipped back around after she caught them, her hands covering her mouth to quiet her laughter. "Oh my God, no, that's not happening."

"Hermione, his foot, I think it's going to — "

"No, no, I don't want to know!"

"And how is everything over here? _Molto bene_?" their server, some Spanish-looking guy named Thomas who was pretending to be an Italian-looking guy named Tomás interrupted them, a mouth turned perpetually up. They both removed their hands from their mouths to choke out that everything was great.

He wandered away, and the carefree moment passed.

Hermione's eyes lasered into his, and he instinctively clenched, went on defense. "Harry, I've been wanting to ask... Why are we here?"

Harry decided to play dumb, oblivious male (a fairly easy role, as he played it rather more frequently and inadvertently than he would like), as if he saw nothing remarkable with what was happening. "I just wanted to spend the day with you. Is that so bad?"

Her eyes softened slightly. "No, it's just...I don't know. A date? It seems...strange. It's not what we _do, _you know? And for the past couple of months you've been...well, you've been different."

His witless pretense was waning. "Different how?"

Hermione fidgeted with her engagement ring. "Um." She looked around as if someone could be listening in, although clearly no one was. "Well, first off, our — our, when we..._you know_," she said meaningfully. "You've been different. Like, it used to be much more...I'm not sure what to call it — but it was strictly somatic. Purely physical." She cleared her throat. "But then it became a bit...warmer."

"Warmer," he repeated tonelessly.

"Yes," she said, uncomfortable. "More emotional, I guess. Even...tender."

"So that's why you started avoiding me?" said Harry, embarrassment making his body tighten in an angry slow broil. "Because I stopped fucking you like you were a sock?"

Hermione flinched and then steeled. "Yes. Yes, that is why."

Harry scratched the side of his head, trying to recall their sex right before she stopped touching him.

It was late February...Hermione came over and looked like she'd been crying earlier, but that was certainly nothing unusual... They started kissing against the wall, he threw her onto the bed... He was pretty sure it was Missionary style, nothing fancy, nothing crazy, he was tired from a long day at training...So tired, he wasn't even that _keen_, in fact...

And it was normal, wasn't it? It wasn't very rough sex, no, but it wasn't like he laid her body down and made love to her or some rubbish like that. It was sex. Intercourse. He would even call it fucking _coitus _if that would make her less weird.

Harry was about to say just that, when the rest of the memory clicked into place.

They had finished, and it was in the middle of the "afterglow" or whatever people called the space in time between having sex and hating yourself, that Harry looked over at Hermione beside him, and was struck by how warm and soft she looked. Almost luminous. He felt drawn in by her, but it also felt very casual, very obvious, like _of course _this is the right thing to do, the only thing he could possibly do in that moment: He rolled over and kissed her shoulder, kissed her cheek...felt kind of awed by her... He wrapped her in his arms and —

"Okay," Harry grumbled, staring down at his food again. "Maybe I kind of get what you mean."

He felt another rush of humiliation, a vain stab to his ego. "So you...stopped...liking it?"

She rolled around a meatball that was probably on its way to cold by now. "It's not that I _disliked _it, I just...I know that I'm doing a bad thing here. A really terrible thing. To Ginny and to Ron," her eyes filled with tears and her voice cracked on Ron's name. "But I guess I can still kind of live with myself if it's just about sex, you know? If it's just about...why I'm doing it."

Harry leaned forward. "Why _are _you doing it? Me."

Hermione laughed a little sadly and shook her head. "A lot of reasons. Or maybe none at all."

"Great answer," he said with a frown. "Really cleared things up."

She perked up. "Yes," she said nodding, "There, you see? I'm really a frightful person to date. I expect who I'm with to open up completely to me, while I keep things inside. I'm also very bossy, a perfectionist, too serious, I cry easily, have a very bad superiority complex, and I'm so worried about being cut down I''ll cut you down first." She became thoughtful for a second, quirked her head sideways. "And I have terribly unmanageable hair."

"Huh?"

"Ginny, on the other hand," Hermione said, slurping a noodle, "has great hair. And she loves Quidditch like you do, which I don't, and she's pretty open, more than I am. She's also funnier than me, and more laid-back. Better around people; everybody likes her."

"Are you..." Harry stared at her incredulously. "Are you pitching me my own girlfriend?"

She wiped at the corner of her mouth with her cloth napkin. "You never got anything easy in your life, Harry. You deserve someone easy. And I am _not_ easy."

Hermione stuttered after he made a face. "Wait, that came out wrong, I just mean — "

Harry didn't want to stay on topic anymore, didn't want to talk about things he may or may not deserve. Thankfully, something subject-change worthy at the table nearby caught his attention.

"Hermione," he whispered in delight/horror, "That girl is feeding her boyfriend sauce with her finger. This is not a drill, this is real."

She struggled to keep her face serious. "Stop looking! I'm trying to talk to you!"

The boy with the oily mustache started to suck enthusiastically on his girlfriend's finger. "I physically can't stop looking. It's like a car crash. He is _really _going in on that thing."

Unable to resist, Hermione took another peak, and the sight of the girl's finger going into the boy's mouth, all the way to her knuckle, made her bark out a laugh before she had time to spin back around. The couple immediately retracted all limbs and fingers from each other and glared at her.

Her eyes were huge as she turned back around and stared at him. "They saw me."

"I don't think they saw," Harry lied.

"Really?" she whispered.

"Definitely not."

He watched them angrily hail a server, the boy's mustache twitching in indignation. Multiple people were now staring in interest.

"Okay, they might have seen," Harry choked, fighting laughter.

"Ohhh, I wanna die, I wanna die," Hermione moaned, her hands covering her eyes in embarrassment.

"Hermione, I have something serious I want to ask you," he said somberly.

At the change in note, she slid her hands away and stared at him with some concern. "Um...Yes?"

He took a deep breath, stared at her with all the sincerity he could muster.

"Do you want me to give you a foot job?"

She made a high-pitched noise at the back of her throat and threw her napkin and leaving. "Okay, we're leaving, we obviously cannot handle civilization."

"Because I don't want to, but I'd be willing to make the sacrifice if that's really what you're into, I want to respect your kinks —"

Hermione stood up and smacked him on the arm, her head hung so that her chin was almost touching her chest as she hurried towards the hostess stand, where she dropped her money before fleeing the scene. Harry laughed openly and followed, switching out her money to return to her for his own, and exiting the restaurant while the two teen lovers stared daggers into his back.

"So. We were discussing Ginny," Hermione said promptly as he fell into step with her, passing by a square of shops.

Harry sighed. "I know how great Ginny is. I know I'm lucky to have her. And I...I love her," he paused. "I think I really do love her. But she just doesn't...do for me what you do for me."

She glanced towards him and then looked forward. "...What do I do for you?"

"You know how after the Battle I never cried?" he said, feeling a dull twist of reluctance that he was going to actively try to remember how he felt back then. He usually just repressed it, in the way he repressed most things.

"Yes, I remember," she said, in a voice as soft and gentle as a fleece blanket, her Let's-Talk-About-Harry voice. "Well, that is until the second time we...at Godric's Hollow..."

"Yeah. Until that time." Harry's tone went clipped and curt, his face stony, and it became very clear to both him and Hermione he was incapable of sharing anymore.

But she was Hermione, so of course she pressed on, pressed too far. "So...so you crying like that was...was like a _good_ thing for you, or —"

"Hermione," he said sternly, abruptly. "Just forget it, okay? Never mind. Let's just talk about something else."

They walked on in silence until he couldn't take it anymore, her worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. "How are you and Ron, then?"

Hermione jumped at the question, and looked like she wasn't going to answer. Which was such bullshit, considering how much time they had devoted to cracking him open. He nudged her, and to his surprise, she took his arm.

"We're...I don't really know," she said. Her warmth beside him softened Harry up.

"So, bad?"

"Not bad, exactly."

A family passed by them then, all topped with mops of blonde hair, three little clones. The baby in his mother's arms was sticky-faced and crying, while the two in front proudly led the pack. The parents just looked tired.

"Do you ever think about the future?" Hermione asked, staring so hard at the mother that Harry watched the woman lock gazes with Hermione and screw up her mouth in annoyance; wary, jealous of her un-stretched stomach and new-new skin.

"I'm just trying to get through the days, really," he said, although it was a lie. He thought of it sometimes; house on a hill, wife and kids, the whole bit. It just seemed so far away, like those kinds of things only got to happen to other people. Happy, normal people.

"Do you...do you think I'm making a mistake? Marrying Ron?" she asked hesitantly, head craning to look up and watch his reaction.

Harry balked.

Should he take this opportunity to drive an even deeper wedge between his friends, or try to be a better man and let them be?

He stared back at Hermione; pretty, intelligent, pushy, erratic, always near tears.

_Was_ this what he wanted?

"I think I'm kind of a biased sounding board for that question," he said at last.

Hermione let out a breath that he hadn't known she'd been holding. "Okay. Okay. I think...maybe I'm just scared."

"Scared of marrying Ron?"

She shook her head, started to bite her thumb-nail. Harry found it a bit weird how Hermione always had to bite something when she was anxious. "No, just...marriage in general. Maybe I'm not cut out for it, you know? Maybe I'll fail. I probably will. I'm failing already."

She looked distraught, and then with a shake of her head the expression was gone, replaced by one of carefully constructed contentment. Like flipping a switch.

"We're getting far too chummy," she joked, smiling at her feet. "I thought you hated talking about feelings."

"Oh, shit, did I have a choice this whole time?" he said, trying for lightness. "In that case, quit talking so much, woman."

"Ha ha," Hermione said, and then she actually did laugh. But they did continue their walk talking about everything besides what they were feeling; Teddy and who was dating whom at school and how Hermione's former classmates were doing in Auror training.

They came upon St. Paul's Cathedral, intimidating and hallowed, spires and pillars stretching towards the heavens. Harry did what he always did when he found himself near a church; glanced at it, realized what it was and shuffled on, repelled by its shameless esotericism, the feeling that it was not somewhere he belonged. But Hermione came to a complete stop, forcing him to turn back as they were still linked by the arm. She stared at it, transfixed.

"Hermione?" he questioned.

She kept her eyes on the church, looking peculiar. "Were the Dursleys religious at all, Harry?"

Harry scoffed. "No, not even remotely, although they were plenty high and mighty. Why?"

Hermione was still regarding the building with such reverence Harry was worried she was having some sort of religious experience. He wouldn't really know how to explain that to Ron.

"You were never interested in religion, either? Not even now?" She asked.

Harry shrugged, starting to feel uncomfortable. "Er, not really. That's Muggle stuff."

She took a couple steps closer, and then suddenly stopped, as if it was protected by a shield to ward her off. "My dad used to be Catholic," she murmured. "He wasn't really _practicing_, exactly. But we always had a gold figure of Jesus on the cross hanging in our kitchen. I went to mass once, and I was intrigued by the Latin, of course, and the historical aspects of it all. History's a bloody thing, no matter what world you're in."

Hermione took another unsteady step forward, dragging him along. "But as far as _belief_, well, you can imagine how I felt about that as a child."

Harry smirked as he pictured an eight-year-old Hermione, transcribing the discrepancies and inconsistencies of religious texts to her frazzled parents.

"But I-I remember once, when I was a kid, I got on my knees and prayed to that little Jesus...ornament." She clucked her tongue on the last word, really trying to emphasize the absolute ridiculousness of her youthful naivete. "It was for some silly reason, naturally. I think I prayed for some friends."

Harry was surprised to hear this, but shouldn't have been. It wouldn't be a far stretch of the imagination to believe Hermione was isolated by her peers in her younger years, what with her studiousness and frank nature. But she never talked about her childhood, so he just assumed it had been perfect. With guilt, Harry realized he'd never really asked her about it before.

She scowled. "All rubbish, of course. I was just talking to myself on the ground like a nutter. But it was...a comfort, I suppose."

Finally, to Harry's relief, she began walking away from the cathedral.

"The day after I got my letter from Hogwarts, and my parents were told magic was real," she said thoughtfully, "Dad took the Jesus down and threw it away."

In Harry's mind he pictured a strange man dipped in gold, bleeding from the hands and skull, nestled carelessly between a rotten banana peel and a wad of tissue, and felt something dangerously close to empathy.

They continued their walk, stopping once for ice cream from a cart sold by a man in a funny little pin-striped apron and pink trousers. Hermione licked her vanilla cone with a quick twirl of her tongue, drawing Harry's attention to her mouth. He pulled her in for a kiss, and she froze.

Feeling her stiffen, he pulled away. Hermione was looking at him cautiously, observing him. Harry felt like a test subject.

"What?" he said.

Her eyes read him like a book, left to right. "Why did you do that?" She didn't ask him like she was affronted or offended, it wasn't in an aggressive tone. She said it slowly, her ears pricked to _really_ hear his answer; grade his response.

His mind spun as he searched for the correct one. "...Because I want to fuck you so bad," he replied, and his voice sounded dead.

But then Hermione visibly relaxed, and kissed him for a long time, and for just that moment, nothing else really mattered to him.

The disgust Harry had been feeling back at the restaurant at the fact that he and Hermione looked normal, unashamed, seemed to have been blown away by the fresh air. Now, he even liked it; that there was no one to catch them, no one to hate them for what they were doing.

It is a heady, unrivaled feeling, to not be hated.

Dusk began to settle over the sky, turning the city purple and puce, like a bruise. Harry smiled as he wiped off some ice cream Hermione somehow got on her nose, and then noticed a little girl with bouncing pigtails and bright yellow trainers come bounding up to them.

When she met them, she was grinning from ear to ear and shaking with excitement, as if she was restraining herself from jumping up and down on the spot.

"Could I have your autograph?" she asked, her voice too loud due to nerves.

Even though signing autographs usually made Harry want to snap every pen handed to him in half, he forced himself to give her a friendly smile and held out his hand for her paper. The girl blinked at him and made no movements to hand him anything.

"Oh, actually, Mr. Potter, sir, I was — I was talking to Hermione."

Hermione looked taken aback. "Me?"

The girl's smile was back, brighter than before. "Yes, Miss! You're my hero. My absolute hero. I'm a Muggle-born too, just been sorted into Gryffindor this year, too nervous to go up to you at school, but I've read all about you. I have your profile from Witch Weekly framed on my wall!"

"Oh, my, well — " Hermione took the girl's pen and began scrawling her name on her sketchpad. Harry felt a grand tenderness at the moment. "What's your name, sweetie?"

"I'm Clara," the girl said, showing off a missing tooth in her grin. "Clara Donovan, and I'm going to be just like you when I grow up!"

Hermione froze again, her face going ashen. She swallowed dryly a few times and Harry grew unnerved by her sudden change of state, knowing what must be crossing her mind. The blood on her hands. The shame. Her scars, both seen and unseen. Things you never want to think about inflicted on children.

Her hands shook as she finished the autograph, and she was misty-eyed when she kneeled down in front of Clara to be at her eye level.

"You know what I think, Clara?" she said, giving the girl a watery smile. "I think you're going to be much more special than I ever was."

Clara smiled toothily again, and hugged Hermione around her neck. Hermione let out a small gasp and it took her a moment to remember to wrap her arms around the girls shoulders, but she did. Harry saw a single tear fall from Hermione's face onto the girl's jumper.

"_Clara_!" A woman in the distance called after her and waved.

"That's my mum, I better go," Clara said, turning on her heel and running towards her mother. "Bye Hermione! Bye Harry Potter!"

She rejoined her mother and they walked out of sight. Hermione stayed rooted to the spot, breathing shallowly.

"How do you get used to that?" she whispered to Harry, struggling not to cry.

Harry took her hand again. He's felt exactly what she's feeling. How awful it is to have people look to you as if you're a savior when you feel like you're splitting apart at the seams, a in hero's clothes. Liar. Fraud. False idol.

"You never really," Harry said, trying to meet her gaze that was still cast outward. "But, eventually, you realize that everything you did was so people like her will never have to. She'll be spared because of what you did, and she'll never have to feel what you're feeling. And that's worth it."

She sniffed and fell against his chest, letting him hold her.

"I hope she's nothing like me when she grows up," Hermione choked, barely audible. She wrapped her arms around his waist and they stayed like that, holding each other, until the cold shooed them away.

It was still fairly early in the night when Harry and Hermione left Muggle London, so Harry suggested going back to Grimmauld Place before she returned home. She smirked at the ground but nodded.

"Only if you want to," he added softly. She responded with a kiss so heated it made Harry feel like he wouldn't have the patience to even make it there.

Once out of the Muggle world, they finally Apparated to just outside of his doorway because Harry still wanted to make this feel like a proper date.

"This was actually really nice," Hermione said with a gentle smile. "I liked pretending to be different people."

Harry felt completely connected to her, grateful that she could say what he was feeling, only better. "Yeah. Yeah, I did too."

She laughed when Harry swooped her up in another kiss, and he melted against her mouth. Her fingers dug into the back of his neck as he tugged on her lip with his teeth, sucked on her tongue with want and fire and need.

"Bed," he said, voice raspy, eyes dark, and Hermione scrabbled to push open the door with one hand while pulling him closer with the other.

He kept kissing her as they tumbled into his home, wrapped up in her body and smell. He had just slid his hand between her thighs when he heard a loud clanging noise coming from the other room.

"Out, Kreacher!" Harry shouted before capturing Hermione's lips again. She whimpered in his arms and held him tighter, grinding delicately on his hand.

"S'only me!" Ron's voice rang out.

Harry had never seen Hermione move so quickly in his life. She disentangled herself from him, jumped about four feet away and smoothed her dress of any wrinkles in a blink of an eye.

"Ron? What are you doing here?" Harry asked, shaking, still in shock at how close he had been to having his entire world come crashing around him, and made his way to the stairway of the kitchen where he'd heard him call from. Ron came out with a chicken wing in hand to greet them.

"Hey, sorry, didn't mean to scare you, I just — Wow. Hermione." He looked at his girlfriend with wonder. "You look great!"

She blushed. "It's only a dress."

Ron caught Harry's eye and chuckled in appreciation. "Never seen it before! Blimey, why'd you look so nice just to run some boring old errands?" Ron dropped the chicken on the counter and scooped her into his arms. She laughed when he twirled her into the air and set her down again to give her a peck on the lips. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

Harry looked away. "I thought you'd be at the Burrow?" he said, feeling out of place in his own home and hating it.

"Ugh, I couldn't stand it another minute," he said, swinging his arm around Hermione. "Aunt Mildred wouldn't stop pinching my cheeks. I don't even think I have them anymore, just numbed, raw muscle on both sides of my face."

Hermione pinched his cheek. "Nope, still there. Still red."

"Hey!" He said, catching her wrist and smiling. "This is a serious malady. Course, it would've been easier if I could've had a Butterbeer or two...but I didn't! Just water for me, thank you kindly."

Hermione smiled at him appreciatively. Then she turned to Harry, who was trying his very best not to grimace. "Harry? Do you still have that elf-made wine the Ministry gifted you?"

"Yeah…"

Hermione clapped her hands together. "Let's open it!"

Ron's mouth fell open. "Seriously?"

Hermione tried very hard to put on a show that she was just feeling excessively merry, but Harry could detect the slight hysteria in her buoyancy. "I'm feeling rather parched."

Ron laughed. "You heard the lady, Harry."

Hermione gave Harry a small smile that probably meant _sorry_, but she didn't need to apologize for being affectionate with Ron. He would have done the same had he been in her shoes. Harry descended into his kitchen to recover the wine from a wooden pantry.

While he busied himself with procuring some crystal glasses that Sirius had left behind, Hermione and Ron went to the opposite side of the room by the large fireplace. Harry watched Ron conjure up a chessboard, and Hermione made a noise between a laugh and a groan.

"You only want to play chess with me because you know you'll beat me," she complained. Ron chuckled.

"Now listen, no wife of mine is going to be a rubbish chess player."

"I'm not rubbish! You just cheat!"

Ron scoffed. "What? How am I cheating?"

"I haven't figured it out yet, but you must be!"

Harry smiled to himself at their bickering. At least some things didn't change. But when he finished pouring generous amounts of wine into each of their glasses, Harry looked up again to see the mood had indeed changed very quickly. The firelight made Hermione's face glow and, seemingly enraptured by her beauty, Ron dropped their small quarrel to lean forwards and kiss her shyly. Harry's hands started to hurt and he looked down to realize he had been digging his nails into his palms. _You don't get to be jealous of him_, he reminded himself. _You're the bad guy in this, remember? You're the bad guy. _

He cleared his throat as he neared them and they scooted away from each other, embarrassed. Harry sat on the ground with Ron and Hermione above him on both sides, sitting on the marble bench of the fireplace. The three friends drank the entire bottle of the thickly bittersweet wine over the course of the next several hours, and they merely played chess and laughed over nothing but Harry thought that this turned out to be a very fine night indeed.

None of them wanting to be separated, they slept on pillows and couches right beside each other, Harry again in the middle. Ron patted Harry on the shoulder before drifting off to sleep and Harry gave Hermione a kiss before she turned in and that was that. He nodded off feeling complete.

The next morning, he woke up to the smell of bacon. Bleary-eyed, Harry shoved on his glasses and headed downstairs to investigate the source of the heavenly smell.

"...I _can _cook, I just know it. It's an untapped potential." Hermione's voice drifted from the kitchen.

"You're the smartest person I know, but no, Hermione, you really can't." Ron retorted. Harry leaned against the side of the wall so he could see them but they couldn't see him. Ron was flipping bacon with his wand while Hermione sat on top of the long counter, watching him do it. Harry recalled the last time they had shagged there and tried not to feel smug about it.

Hermione snickered, failing at pretending to be offended. "You just don't let me!"

"Yeah, and there's a reason for that." Ron smiled lazily at her, the way someone smiles when they know someone utterly belongs to them, and Hermione reached out and pushed his head forwards playfully.

"Fine," she huffed, smirking and crossing her legs. "But you're severely underestimating me, Ronald Weasley."

He grinned at her again. "Never."

Harry shut his eyes, willing away the envy, the feelings of exclusion, the bitterness. They were the impeccable image of domesticity. Why had Hermione confessed to being terrified of this when she clearly slid into it so perfectly? He couldn't help but compare this Hermione, chatty and fiery and at ease to the one that he had spent the day with yesterday, moody and unsure, nearly falling apart in his arms.

But maybe this was an act. Maybe she didn't show what she was truly feeling to Ron, only to Harry, because he just knew her in ways Ron didn't. Maybe she simply didn't think Ron could handle her true emotions like he could. This thought cheered Harry considerably, and he finally made his presence known in the kitchen.

"Hey, Harry," said Ron, gesturing towards the sizzling meat on the stove. "Just saved your entire kitchen from burning down, thought you'd want to know."

Hermione made a disapproving sound. "I had everything _completely _under control. I simply thought they were supposed to catch fire like that. Makes it crispy."

Harry chuckled and kissed Hermione on the cheek. She eyed him reproachfully but Ron didn't notice anything odd about it, so Harry turned his back to her to get some breakfast.

Mid-bite, Harry heard a loud knock on his door.

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A/N: Ooh, who could it be?

How did you guys like the references to religion in this chapter? It was an idea that I just couldn't get out of my head because it was so sad and logical: doesn't it make sense that Muggle-borns abandoned their faith when they discovered the wizarding world? How could you not? I actually teared up a bit at the thought of Hermione's dad throwing away that figure of Jesus, and I think it went well in this chapter as Hermione is really struggling with morality and the quality of her own soul. As always, thanks for reading and reviewing!


	5. Flip-Floppers

A/N: Sorry this chapter took longer than previous ones! I was finally able to return to work this week so I've been swamped. Also, just FYI for people tempted, I've recently had to delete a review for complaining that Hermione is a "cheap skank." Criticize my writing if you must, but keep your misogyny the fuck out of my face. I will not tolerate it, and I will immediately delete and block you.

Anyways...this chapter is a little Harry/Hermione light because I'm using it as a bridge to expand our world outside the Ron/Hermione/Harry/Ginny bubble a little. Hope you like!

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_I'm playing dead, I faked my death_  
_And I'll keep pretending if nothing else, for the sake of the tradition._  
_And I am confident, even if it makes no sense_  
_I will say 'I love you' back, to the love that I am given._

"Looking Like You Just Woke Up" - The Front Bottoms

* * *

Harry walked cautiously to his door with Ron and Hermione following closely behind, breakfast still cooking on the stove, wands drawn. Harry reckoned they were all being overly cautious, but why take the risk? It had been a long time since Grimmauld Place had been hidden sufficiently by the Fidelius Charm, with the exclusion of Muggles. There were simply too many Secret-Keepers not keeping the secret, especially since Yaxley's discovery of it a lifetime ago. Regardless, unannounced visitors still made Harry edgy.

He opened the door to find a short, squat man with a ridiculous handlebar mustache and a wire monocle, brandishing a scroll. Behind him was a girl with russet-colored skin, almond-shaped, seaglass green eyes, and a wide, upturned nose.

It was Pansy Parkinson.

Ron reacted first. "What the hell is she doing here?"

She sniffed disdainfully. "Oh, goodie. You lot are still friends."

"Mr. Potter!" The man cried genially. "Good morning to you, sir! My name is Augustus Jameson, social worker for the Ministry's Dark Wizard Disciplinary Commission, subdivision 5C, section 32X, subsidiary number forty — "

"What do you want?" Harry interrupted, irritated and baffled by Pansy's presence. "And why is she with you?"

The man looked from Harry to Pansy in confusion. "Because Ms. Parkinson here is…" He searched through his scroll with great focus. "Yes, yes! It says right here, Ms. Parkinson is Harry Potter's very close friend and associate from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

There was a pause of confused silence that was interrupted by Hermione snorting. Pansy took a step forward towards them, and Harry and Ron moved protectively in front of Hermione, raising their wands at her.

Pansy paused mid-step, eyebrows raised.

"Honestly you two," Hermione murmured hotly, "I'm an adult. I am not frightened of Pansy Parkinson…"

When Harry and Ron still did not lower their wands, Augustus looked absolutely flummoxed.

"Oh, my! I assure you, that is most unnecessary!" He exclaimed, gawping at their wands. "Now — now listen, Ms. Parkinson, who has been _stripped _of her wand privileges, might I inform you, has been temporarily placed in the care of the Ministry while her parents are being detained as suspected Dark Wizards. Unfortunately, we are understaffed and overwhelmed by the number of cohorts in our current housing unit due to the influx of suspected Death Eaters and their allies. _Fortunately_, there _is _a sprawling, public, albeit fenced, area for individuals such as Pansy, who are not technically suspects but not quite..." He skewered Pansy with a disgusted look. "Innocent. She, however, objected to the Ministry's housing unit, and after informing us she was a close friend of yours, Mr. Potter, we thought we could make a special exception and have her serve house arrest at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix."

"She's under arrest? Has she been convicted?" asked Hermione.

"Oh, no, no, like I said, if she were convicted of any known crimes she would be in a much worse place than this, Ms. Granger," Augustus assured her, although he stressed the word _known_ with a little wink in her direction to imply he expected at least some degree of guilt. "I suppose it's more like what the Muggles call, 'Witness Protection.' Except it's compulsory. And she'll be here all the time. Because she's not allowed to leave. At all."

"I really don't see that happening," Harry replied, still confused as to why Pansy would even try to live at Grimmauld Place with him. Or want to, for that matter.

Augustus' eyes then narrowed at Pansy. "Well, Ms. Parkinson, it seems that you are quite out of options — "

"_No_!" she cried fearfully, the first time Harry had ever seen her display a genuine human emotion in all the years he'd known her. "Listen, just — just let me talk to my mates for a second. Alone."

Augustus huffed, displeased. "You have five minutes, no more. You are one of ten cases I have today alone, Miss."

The man wobbled away, muttering to himself. Harry felt like his face had frozen into an incredulous expression for so long, it would never return to normal.

"Your _mates_?" Ron said, glaring at her. "Since when are we your mates? When you were beaten with an ugly stick as a child, did they also muss about your brains as well?"

Pansy scowled. "You can stop pointing your wands at me, first off."

"Not a chance," Harry retorted.

Pansy crossed her arms across her body. "Look, this isn't exactly my idea of a pleasant excursion either. But the alternative is worse."

Hermione shoved away Ron and Harry so she could get closer in Pansy's face. "Do you expect us to feel sorry for you because the living conditions the Ministry supplied aren't quite up to your standards? Were the linens too itchy? The sink not made out of solid gold?" she spat.

Pansy stared daggers at her. Harry tensed, fully intending on hexing her something irreversible if she tried anything at all with Hermione.

"You have no idea what it's like out there for female purebloods with...murky reputations," Pansy seethed, arms shaking at her sides now.

Hermione's mouth turned down, looking as perplexed as Harry felt.

"Oh, surprised, are you?" Pansy went on, addressing only Hermione now. "Course you are. Haven't been in any of the mainstream papers. Avengement assaults, they're calling them. Pretty name, isn't it? Yeah, they're not so bad. As long as it stops with merely inflicting pain and pain, and more pain. And I've seen enough blood between my friends' thighs to know it rarely does."

Hermine gasped and even Harry couldn't maintain eye contact with Pansy.

"And those public encampments that they're pushing on me?" she went on, looking more encouraged knowing she's caught them off-guard, "Completely unregulated. Unsupervised. Anyone can get in, but no one can get out. Makes for easy pickings, especially since we're not allowed wands. Or can you not believe your precious Mudbloods are capable of such dirty deeds, Granger?"

"Watch it," Harry said darkly, and Ron mirrored his expression.

"There've been — " Hermione stuttered, shifting nervously. "There've been reports about some attacks, but...so far nothing confirmed…"

"Of course not!" Pansy snarled. "They're going to keep it covered up, all in the name of righteous retaliation. And if you make me stay there," she turned towards Harry now, "it will happen to me."

"I seem to remember," Ron said, sounding academic about it, "you didn't care much about what would happen to Harry when you tried to pitch him off to Voldemort last year."

Harry steeled up, glaring again, and Hermione did the same; a united front against all things Slytherin.

Pansy gritted her teeth, eyes darting to Augustus and then back to them. "Fucking hell, I just can't get away from that, can I? Is it so hard to believe that I was just — I was just _scared_? That I just wanted everything to be _over_?"

"We were all scared," Hermione spat again, arms crossed. "You're just weak."

Pansy looked like she wanted to smack her. "Fine. Yeah, maybe I was weak. But while you three were off gallivanting on your little camping trip, _I_ was at Hogwarts the entire year. _I_ watched the Carrows torture first-years every day. Crying and shrieking for their mums. Try sleeping some time when all you can hear are eleven-year-olds screaming for mercy."

It was probably an act, but Harry could've sworn she had tears in her eyes. "I'm not brave. I'm not noble. I'm not even particularly nice. But I'm not a monster. So if there was a chance that exchanging you could save hundreds of children, yeah, okay, myself included, I'd sell you out every time. Every time."

Augustus shuffled forward, interrupting her defense. "I'm afraid your time is up, Ms. Parkinson." He looked to Harry. "Well? What's the verdict?"

"Is it true? About the encampments?" Harry asked him, a bit relieved at his presence as he was dangerously close to feeling something that wasn't outright hatred towards Pansy. "Is there really no one keeping the occupants safe?"

Augustus chuckled nervously. "Eh, it's nothing to lose sleep over, Mr. Potter. These are mostly nasty Dark Wizards we're keeping here, not a good bunch. There's enough security to keep anyone from being killed, at least."

"Oh, and that's enough?" Hermione cried. "As long as there are no murders, everything's just peachy?"

Augustus looked surprised at her outburst. "Ms. Granger, like I said, these are not good wizards —"

"Pansy can stay here," Harry said, firmer than he felt. "Temporarily."

Hermione and Ron gaped at him. Pansy, however, kept her expression restrained.

"Very good! Makes my job easier," Augustus said, conjuring a quill for Harry to sign with. "If you'd just sign here, here and here — legal issues, you understand — you grant your consent to allow Ms. Parkinson to use number twelve, Grimmauld Place as room and board. She will be allowed five yards out of the residence in any direction, but no more." He immediately spoke the enchantments needed to keep Pansy inside the restricted area. "And if, for any reason you would elect to evict Ms. Parkinson from your home, it is well within your right."

Harry signed, feeling a bit sick.

"Excellent, excellent! And here is all the information you need to carry out any potential termination." He eyed Pansy distastefully as he handed Harry the papers. "I have a hunch you may need it."

She proffered her best scowl in his direction but he had already turned on the spot and Disapparated with a quiet _pop_.

There was a rather pregnant pause in conversation. Pansy rolled her eyes and attempted to walk towards the door, but Harry stopped her.

"What?" she asked, brow furrowed.

"You don't come in when Hermione's here," he replied sternly.

Pansy's mouth fell open. "You're joking."

In answer, Harry placed his hand on Hermione's lower back to walk her inside. He tried to ignore the jolt of electricity it shot through him. Ron followed, frowning at Pansy the whole time.

She shouted at him when he closed the door in her face. "Great! Yeah! I'll just have a jaunt 'round the yard. That sounds wonderful! Thank you so much for your kindness, oh, mighty hero!" Mercifully, the thick door muffled her quite a bit.

"Blimey, Harry," Ron said, looking at him as if he had just contracted a very serious illness. It wasn't too far off from the truth. "That's going to be...different."

"It's only until we sort out things at the Ministry," Harry said, sliding his wand back into his pocket. "Once the encampments are safe, I don't care what happens to her."

"Yes, I think that's for the best," Hermione commented. "If it's you who's asking, Harry, surely they'll do something about these..._attacks_. It's deplorable."

Harry glanced at her then looked away, suddenly feeling icy towards her. She had moved closer to Ron and it caused Harry to feel that bite of exclusion again. It also didn't help that she was still wearing Harry's shirt as pyjamas; it made him feel aching, conflicting sensations in his stomach.

"Maybe you should go, Hermione," Harry said, trying not to sound as severe as he felt.

He didn't fool her. She gave him a mutinous look and she seemed to be on the verge of fighting him on it, but then resigned.

"Yes. My parents will be expecting me before ten, so I suppose I should get going."

"Do you want me to go with you?" asked Ron, looking hopeful that she would say no. Hermione's fear of heights prevented her from flying anywhere, and Apparating first thing in the morning can be a nasty business.

"No, that's all right, really."

Hermione glanced at Harry for a fraction of a second before leaning in to kiss Ron on the cheek.

"Enjoy Parkinson," she said to him doggedly before turning on the spot and Disapparating. Harry just stared at the empty space she left in her wake.

"STILL OUT HERE! But please, take your time. Maybe have a cup of tea and a nap. No hurry at all!"

Harry sighed and Ron snickered. "Reckon if she disappears in the middle of the night no one would make any complaints," he said.

"Come on, let's just go," Harry grumbled. "Because waiting in queues at the Ministry is really how I like spending my weekends."

He and Ron took slightly more time than was strictly necessary getting dressed, and then finishing their breakfast at a leisurely pace, and then dragging their feet to the front door, before letting Pansy inside.

Sticking her nose in the air, she walked in without looking at either of them.

With a quick greeting: "Your bedroom's upstairs. Don't touch anything." Harry and Ron departed for the Ministry.

When they arrived, it took them some time to locate the proper division. The office still wasn't operating very smoothly, and there were so many divisions and subdivisions and sub-subdivisions that if Harry Potter had been anyone besides Harry Potter it would have been simply impossible.

But they finally arrived at the office of Eustace Crane, head of the Disciplinary Commission, and stepped inside.

Eustace was a thin man with beady eyes buried beneath exceedingly bushy salt-and-pepper eyebrows. His office was a disaster; meager sunlight shone through broken blinds, files were scattered haphazardly and half-filled manila folders littered the floor. He looked up at their entrance, and then immediately sat down in shock.

"Mr. Potter! Mr. Weasley! W-what are...what are you doing here?"

Harry and Ron remained standing, all business.

"We've recently learned you're leaving the suspected Death Eaters and their allies vulnerable to attack in your encampments." Harry said, feeling insane to be defending Death Eaters but not sure how else to phrase it. "It's unacceptable."

Eustace looked at him as if Harry had just informed him he enjoyed dressing up as a fairy and frolicking in the woods in his spare time. "Mr. Potter, I assure you, if them escaping is what you're worried about, it is simply impossible for them to —"

"Well yeah, that's part of the issue innit?" said Ron, crossing his arms. "They're trapped and totally defenseless."

Again, Eustace gave off the impression that he felt like he was being pranked. "And, you do know that these are Death Eaters, don't you? Death Eaters as in, _Death Eaters_?"

"There are women there," argued Harry, displeased at his implication. "Regardless of what they did, we can't leave them as open targets."

Eustace made a flustered sound. "As much as I may like to guarantee them proper surveillance, we simply don't have the funds to —"

"I'll cover the cost," Harry said flatly.

"We'll go half," Ron added.

"Ron, it's really not a problem —"

"How much?" Ron asked Eustace, ignoring Harry.

He repeated his flustered sound and lifted his hands up. "At least 10,000 Galleons. At least."

Ron grimaced, shifted his feet. Even Harry had a blip of hesitance. It was a good amount of money.

But then Ron nodded at him, and he returned it.

"Done," said Harry, reaching over to shake Eustace's hand. "We'll have Gringotts transfer the money later this week."

And with that, the duo left the man to flounder over the events of the past few minutes.

With the weekend off Auror duty and Hermione gone, Harry and Ron elected to spend the day at The Burrow with the remaining members from the family reunion. Harry felt so drained from the events of the morning he looked forward to the prospect of fading into the background of a noisy household.

He did have mixed feelings about seeing Ginny; on the one hand, he felt very grounded when he was with her. Being with her felt like he was where he "should" be, which is a comforting feeling, really. She was radiant, always. Witty, for the most part. Happy, generally. A good influence for him to be around.

But all this only barely made up for the all-encompassing guilt that sometimes constricted his lungs so tightly he thought he might explode.

This guilt was actually, surprisingly, fairly new. Perhaps he was too busy emotionally flat-lining to notice it in the early days, or maybe sex with Hermione truly used to be only about sex and his brain managed to rationalize it somehow. But the revitalization of their relationship felt deeper this time, more significant, and he almost never stopped thinking about her, annoyingly.

Resulting in the aforementioned crushing, potential brain-splatter-inducing, guilt.

And yet when Ginny wrapped herself in his arms at the sight of him like always, he couldn't deny that he liked her there.

"Hello, Harry!" cried Mrs. Weasley from behind. "Are you boys hungry? Have plenty of leftovers from the fry-up."

Ron dove in to a second breakfast of eggs, hash and pork until George rapped him on the knuckles with a wooden spoon. "I'd be careful there, Ronald. Gettin' a bit porky yourself round the middle."

Ron gave him a rude gesture behind his mother's back, but unfortunately for him his Aunt Muriel came rounding the corner at the same second to catch it. She swatted the back of his head with her hand and waddled into a seat at the table. "Don't be a prat! And George is right — you'll crush that skinny Muggle-born of yours if you keep going like that."

"Oh, stop!" cried his Aunt Mildred, a stout old woman with a propensity for large, flowered hats. Harry was amused at the fact that Ron's relatives seemed to be continuously materializing out of the woodwork. "Ronald has a perfect body! Plump and healthy!" Harry, Ginny and George all snickered as Mildred pinched Ron's cheeks again to emphasize her point, and Ron pushed the food away in a huff.

"Thank you, Aunt Mildred," he muttered miserably after a reproachful look from his mother, and that got the three of them laughing again. Soberly, Harry noticed again that George is always the last to laugh now.

More redheaded aunts and uncles and cousins and second-cousins began piling in, enticed by the sound of conversation and cooking food. Somewhere in the events, a mug of tea was thrust into Harry's hands as well as a sweet roll and a lemon bar covered in powdered sugar. Ginny gave Harry a smile and a nod towards the small back garden, and he followed her outside so they could be alone.

The frogs croaked pleasantly from the Weasleys pond as Harry and Ginny made their way into the overgrown grasses and vegetation. Harry told her all about what happened with Pansy Parkinson and then at the Ministry, to which Ginny responded with outrage and sympathy.

"I can't believe the _balls_ on that ugly bitch_," _she groaned. "Asking that of you. As if she didn't make life bad enough for us at school."

"Tell me about it."

"Actually... I never really did tell you, did I?" Ginny said quietly, peering over at him. "About what her and all her friends did that whole year you were gone."

Harry put down his tea on the dainty, glass table the Weasleys kept in the center of their garden, sunlight refracting off its oval shards. He sensed this conversation veering serious, which was rare for Ginny.

"Nah, you never did. I kinda got the gist, though," he said. "...You don't ever seem that willing to talk about it. Or really about anything back then."

She stared out across the high reeds. "No reason to dwell on the past." Her gaze on him turned fierce. "Just get her out of your house as soon as humanly fucking possible."

"Will do."

After a pause, Ginny jerked her arm towards the ground, quick as a flash; like snatching a salmon in a river, and picked up a squeaking garden gnome. She immediately cranked her arm back and released; sending the gnome flying, its screams ending in a comical squeak as it soared over the edge. She laughed.

"Nice one," Harry commented, picking up his tea again. The serious moment had passed.

She smirked. "Thanks, I'm getting better. It's all in the wrist, my friend."

Ginny suddenly spun towards him, smirk growing wider. "Hey, by the way, did you know you were having an affair with Hermione?"

Harry sputtered with his tea, and it dripped down his chin. Ginny laughed at him and wrinkled her nose. "Gross."

"What are you talking about?" He asked her, mind racing.

She pulled out her wand and summoned a tabloid paper titled The Buzz. She handed it to Harry who's pulse quickened as he saw on the cover a moving photo of Hermione and himself, walking arm in arm in the streets of Muggle London. The headline at the top was bright red, the color of passion and scandal.

**"HARRY POTTER: THE BOY WHO CHEATS?"**

Harry's blinked, heart pounding.

Ginny, however, was completely at ease. She bent down to snatch up another gnome that was trying to scurry down a hole in the ground. "So this woman comes up to me this morning in the street; crying, like, _really _crying. She gives me that paper and goes, 'I'm so sorry, Ms. Weasley. I was really rooting for you two.'" Ginny cackled. "I felt so badly for her and I tried to explain it wasn't real, but she was so upset I had to buy her a cup of tea to calm her nerves. Mad, eh?"

Harry forced a chuckle. "Mad."

"You should read it," she said, chucking the gnome. "It's pretty scintillating, I'll say. Apparently, you two engage in group sex with Muggles and then obliviate them afterwards. Oh, but fair warning, there's also a bit about you and Dumbledore getting it on back at Hogwarts. Plus quite a few Slytherin girls and boys that you kept on the side."

"Wow," said Harry, opening the paper and trying to control his sweat glands. He felt physically ill at the accusation of something going on between him and Dumbledore, even in a gossip magazine, but wanted to keep the mood light. "I had no idea I led such a robust sex life."

"Oh, I knew what I was signing up for with you. Pervert."

She kissed the side of his head, but his blood ran cold as she unknowingly echoed the nightmare version of herself.

"Merlin, it's ridiculous," she shook her head. "There are still Death Eaters on the loose, the economy is a disaster from the War, the Ministry is as efficient as a soggy boot and yet this is what people care about."

Harry shrugged in reply and tried to look as if he wasn't poring over the contents of the paper like his life depended on it. He searched for any pictures that were really damning, ones that maybe Ginny didn't catch, but it looked like he and Hermione weren't caught in anything more intimate than a walk. Harry sighed in relief and scolded himself for not being more careful. He had to remember he was never really alone, even if he felt like he was.

"What were you two doing in Muggle London, though?" Ginny asked, sounding casual but Harry knew her curiosity was piqued. "You said you were sorting things out for Hermione's visit with her parents."

Harry shrugged again, hoping it wasn't becoming a tell. "We had a craving for Italian food."

She gave him that strange look that seemed to be crossing her face more and more often these days. "Hm. Okay. Honestly...I was surprised you two were spending any time together at all. I thought you had a row of some sort."

"Really? Why?"

Ginny kicked around another gnome like she was dribbling a soccer ball. "You've been very rude to her lately. I was actually going to have a go at you about it." She looked up at him fiercely. "She's my friend too and I won't tolerate anyone being nasty to her. And that includes you."

Harry felt such a genuine rush of affection towards Ginny for standing up on Hermione's behalf that it took him a second to respond. "Er, yeah well, we did have a bit of a falling out. But we've patched things up."

She let the gnome scurry away and pursed her lips. "Good. I imagine the group sex helped things along."

"Like you wouldn't believe."

They laughed together easily and Harry wondered if he would ever stop surprising himself. In the worst of ways.

"Well, Mr. Potter," Ginny cooed, stepping towards him. "I suppose if I am to keep you from all your lovers I ought to see to you properly."

Harry smiled weakly and made a noise of hesitation as she took his hand to lead him inside, but she quickly threw him A Look that made his brains turn to mush and he followed her to her bedroom without further protestation, familiar heat pooling low in his stomach.

On their way up the stairs, they crossed paths with George, who appeared to be fiddling with a new invention that looked like a music box crossed with a toilet. He quirked his eyebrows at the sight of their conjoined hands and smirked. "Off to work on some holiday coursework, children?"

Ginny smiled sweetly at him. "Yes, George. And perhaps a couple rousing rounds of chess if we're not too tuckered out from all the academia."

George scowled. "Control your woman, there, Harry. She's getting a bit big in her britches, if you ask me."

Ginny sent a stinging jinx flying at his hand and he yelped as he dropped his newest project.

"Bit excessive," George grumbled, and Ginny smiled again as she pulled a thoroughly embarrassed Harry into her room.

Her room always smelled like flowers, although Harry never sees them put out; and her open window doused her pink walls, cotton bed sheets and vintage drapes in sunshine. The captain of the Holyhead Harpies gave Harry an accusative glare from the poster above Ginny's bed, but that might have just been his conscience.

Sex with Ginny was usually playful, athletic, competitive even. They often laughed while they made love, matching each other move for move; so unlike the gripping possessiveness and raw desperation of sex with Hermione.

The only exception to this rule was the first time they did so, when Harry had taken Ginny's virginity. But this was another topic that Was Not To Be Spoken Of.

Ginny had been nervous — more than nervous; _unnerved_. Harry kept trying to stop before they even really got started, insisting that he didn't mind waiting longer, that he didn't want to pressure her, didn't want to make her do anything she wasn't ready to do. (The nobility of this gesture was rather sullied by the fact that he was consistently shagging Hermione at this time, but he tried not to think about that).

But Harry had secretly been hoping, _pleading_ with the universe, that once he and Ginny started having sex he wouldn't need to go back to Hermione anymore, that Ginny could make him feel just as much as Hermione did.

And to his delight, she had fervently denied not wanting to go through with it, reaffirming again and again that she wanted him and loved him and was ready.

Then Ginny laid herself down; body perfectly rigid, face eerily blank, and just glared at him as he entered her.

_Thrust. _

_"Do you want me to stop?"_

_"No."_

_Thrust. Thrust. Thrust._

_"We don't have to keep going, if you don't want to. It's totally fine."_

_"Keep going."_

_Thrust. Thrust._

_"I'm starting to feel kind of...Ginny, I mean it, I won't be mad or anything _— "

"_I said, keep going! I'm fine."_

_Thrust. _

_"You're, um, you're really beautiful."_

_"...Thanks." _

So Harry had squeezed his eyes shut and tried his best, tried so very hard, to make love to her, but he didn't know how; he only knew how to fuck.

He felt maybe a tenth of what he felt when he slept with Hermione: no lucid release, no sharper sense of self, no relief from the numbness. He wondered if the universe was having a right laugh at his expense, like maybe his life was a running joke that stopped being funny but they kept beating it to death anyway.

But he still came, and Ginny did not. That wasn't even the bad part.

The bad part came after, when he was still gasping from his orgasm, and he raised himself on his elbows to stare down at Ginny and make sure she was okay.

The look on her face was unforgettable. He sometimes still saw it when he shut his eyes while in a particularly self-loathing mood.

Harry had never seen a human being look so _furious_. Her top lip was recoiling in what he could only interpret as disappointment, her nostrils flaring, her eyes, her eyes so full of resentment and accusation.

In their shallow, hard depths they said: _You've stolen from me. You've _dirtied _me, you son of a bitch._

Before he could say or do anything, apologize, defend himself, run away, Ginny softened her face and gave him a smile that didn't reach her eyes.

Harry knew if he ever brought it up she would tell him that he must have been imagining things, but he also knew that she would be lying.

Compared and contrasted against his first time with Hermione, he still couldn't decide which was worse.

"Want me to give you a blowjob?"

Harry snapped back to the present and stared at Ginny, who had just whipped off her shirt and exposed her breasts to him, rosy nipples swollen. There was still a scar above her right breast from the Battle, even whiter than her otherwise flawless, porcelain skin; crescent-shaped, an eyeless smiley face. Sometimes after they had sex she would stare at it in the mirror for minutes at a time, run her pointer finger over it again and again, mute.

"Do you like giving me blowjobs?" he asked her, and she looked shocked for a second.

Then she laughed, stared at him incredulously. "That's a weird question."

"It is?"

She crawled across the bed on her hands and knees until she was on top of him, palms on either side of his torso.

"Usually," she said, planting open-mouthed kisses on his neck, fondling him through his pants, "if a bloke is offered a blowjob, he doesn't stop and question it."

Harry moaned a little, and his hips raised off the bed, heat making him want to grind against her.

But he then lifted his hand and rested it against her chest, pushing her away just enough so she'd stop kissing him. "So you don't just do things because you think I want you to?"

Her body froze, and she eyed him for a long moment; uneasy, concerned, lovely, kind.

Harry held his breath as she squared her face in front of his, cautiously, almost sinuous.

"I love you," she said slowly, eyes big and pleasant, tracing his lips with the fingers of her left hand. Her fingertips were warm and gentle, and Harry kissed the tip of her index just because he couldn't help himself. "So everything that you want, I want. Everything that makes you happy, makes me happy. That's just how love _works_, babe."

If that was what love was, Harry was frightened that maybe he didn't love anything.

"I want you," he told her. "Just you."

When you say something again and again, after all, it becomes real. That's how new truths are invented, and everybody knows that.

That's just how it works.

Ginny smiled and straddled his hips, rocked against him with her knickers still on until he was gasping and hard enough to cut glass.

(The thing about Ginny was, although she couldn't always _get_ him, she could always get him hard.)

Harry groaned; partly because the friction felt so good and partly because his stomach was hurting so horribly it felt like someone had dropped a rock into it.

She giggled when he pushed her down and the bed-springs squeaked in protest, but he didn't laugh at all. Just promptly took himself in hand and lined the flared head of his cock against her entrance; shivering with her when it bumped against her clit on the way down, and then sheathed himself inside her, to the hilt.

Ginny felt amazing around his erection, and he grunted at the sensations shooting through him. The pleasure was accompanied by a shame so viscerally poignant it was painful, and he couldn't breathe.

Harry just wanted to get this over with.

He was never good at not letting his emotions show on his face during sex, so he knew she could see his anguish, could see the physical agony etched in his drawn eyes and the downward turn of his mouth. He couldn't stand looking at her face, at the open trust and adoration in it, how much she cared; oh God, he was going to be sick, he was going to vomit blood, throw up his organs, because she kept staring and staring and she loved him so much and he didn't deserve it, and his body was on fire it was bursting and it was rotting; if only she'd just stop looking up at him, if she would just —

"D-do you want me to turn around or something?" Ginny gasped tremulously.

"_Yes_!" Harry cried, too quickly and too loud and far, far too relieved.

A flicker of hurt flashed through her eyes, and he stopped moving, scrambling to find the words to make what had just occurred less horrible.

He didn't even want to think about what his face must have looked like to bring her to ask that.

"Um, I just — I just meant, yeah, it'll feel good — "

She nodded, smiled with dead eyes and turned over, parting her legs for him.

Harry stared at the apple shape of her arse for a second and felt emptier and more poisonous than he had in a long time. Kind of like in fifth year when he thought he was possessed by Voldemort, and felt like a creature that was infected. Like that, but worse.

He tried to mentally shut down, to experience the next few minutes as a passive observer. It didn't really work.

When he came, he did so thinking about Hermione, about how somehow, this was all her fault.

* * *

Ginny recovered quickly, sitting up and joking around with him almost immediately after they were done.

She was much better at bouncing back than he was.

Harry guessed that he was just weaker than her.

They were sitting facing each other, her feet on his lap, both half-clothed, as if their sex had been normal and happy. Adolescent lovers without a care in the world — so sweet.

"I'm going to miss you," Ginny said brightly, poking him with her foot. For some reason, he wondered if she was lying. "It's no fair Hermione gets to leave, I need someone to suffer with me."

Most students had to remain at Hogwarts overnight during the regular school year. However, McGonagall, as the new Headmistress, made a special exception for Hermione to Floo home once she was finished with classes, so that she would at least have the option of sleeping in her own bed, in the comfort of her own home. There were others who were granted this qualification: Hannah Abbott, Dennis Creevey, and Parvati Patil to name just a few. It was an effort made by the school to offer support and compromise towards students who appeared to be psychologically impaired after the events of the War.

Hermione informed Ron and Harry of this fact once; stiff, embarrassed, and never mentioned it again.

Harry frowned. "I'm pretty sure she's suffering too."

Ginny's eyes widened. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that! I know she's, she's having a hard time... Merlin, you should've seen her at the beginning of the school year, sometimes she would just act so — and I try to be there for her and everything, but she gets really withdrawn and she'll snap at you if you even —"

"Yeah," he said edgily, "She seems a lot better now though."

She made a noise of disagreement but then shrugged. "Sure. Yeah, I guess she is, now that I think about it, kinda. But like I was saying, I just...I wish I could come home to you at night."

Ginny leaned forward and kissed him. He immediately pulled away.

Maybe Hermione could still kiss her prospective Weasley without feeling like wanting to stab herself in the kidney, but he just couldn't anymore.

"What's wrong?" she asked, eyebrows knotting together.

"Ginny...I've just been thinking…"

He cursed his timing, knowing he should put this off to when they hadn't literally _just_ had sex, but he felt like if he didn't do this now he never would. "Maybe...maybe we shouldn't see each other after you go back to Hogwarts next week," he said, each word like pulling a tooth by the root.

She froze. "What do you mean?"

He played with the frayed ends of her blanket, just for something to look at besides her face. "It's just, I'm dealing with...things, and I-I don't want to inflict those...things...on you anymore. And you've got N.E.W.T.s coming up, so I don't want you worrying about me while you're so busy. I just…"

He looked up at her, and he couldn't swallow.

Harry remembered the last time he had seen Ginny cry, when she was eleven years old in the Chamber. Terrified. Alone. Handling darkness that no one her age should ever have to see, a darkness that forever bound Harry with her since that year. That was the one and only time he'd ever actually seen her cry. Until now.

Even her tears were beautiful. One sparkling icicle dripped down her cheek, catching just above her chin. Harry was close enough to see another at the cusp of her eyelid, dangling, threatening.

"Are you...are you saying you don't want to be with me?" she asked him, voice choked. It broke Harry's heart.

_Say yes; make the sacrifice. Let her go. Let her be with someone who deserves her. _"No, no of course not! I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying. I dunno, I think I'm just stressed."

_YOU PSYCHOPATH! WHAT IS _WRONG_ WITH YOU?!_

Ginny closed her eyes and sighed an angry, relieved laugh. "I want to punch you so badly for that."

Harry forced a smile. "I probably deserve it."

She pounced on him, that same relieved, furious laugh at her throat. "You're bloody right you deserve it, you stupid twat!"

Harry chuckled as they wrestled on her bed, her throwing him a few licks that were harder than usual — one in particular between his ribs that he was certain would leave a bruise — until he pinned her down.

Ginny lifted her neck up to kiss him again, and he forced himself to stay put.

"I love you," she said quietly. "I love you forever."

"I-I love you, too."

_OH MY GOD, YOU PRICK! _

He fell back against the bed, suddenly exhausted, and she melted against him, kissed his chest. Holding her in his arms, her sinewy limbs splayed between his, Harry wondered if Ginny could taste the scum underneath his skin.

The worst part was, in that moment, it kind of felt like he was doing the right thing.

When he left the Burrow that night, looking back at the house full of red, shining faces, he vowed that he would protect this. He wouldn't let anything separate him from this family, his family. Even if the thing he was fighting against was himself.

He beat Voldemort. He could beat himself.

...Right?

* * *

He had nearly forgotten about Pansy Parkinson when he Apparated home, but was rudely reminded at the sight of her lounging — literally _lounging_, her feet propped up and covered by fur-trim slippers, her emerald green robe looking like fine, expensive silk — on his austere old sofa that he had inherited from Sirius, being poured a brandy by Kreacher from Harry's best crystal decanter. It was half empty.

She had certainly made herself at home.

"Ah, there he is," Pansy drawled, exchanging a look with Kreacher. "The master of this humble abode. The elf and I were getting concerned."

Harry couldn't suppress the grimace on his face at the sight of her, and he slumped into his kitchen, feeling sour. While he filled a glass with water, he heard her and Kreacher snickering over something Kreacher had mumbled. When he looked up, they were both staring at him, and only laughed harder when his eyebrows wrankled in suspicion.

"What?" he ordered, any hint of good spirit now completely gone.

"Nothing, Master, nothing at all," rasped Kreacher, though he smirked at Pansy again. "Kreacher is just pleased that Master finally has some proper company in the house."

Pansy seemed to swell at the house-elf's words, her eyes lighting up; greedy, hungry. It must have been a while since her name or the purity of her blood got her in anyone's good graces.

Harry glared.

"Well, sorry to you, Kreacher, but it won't be lasting long. Not even till the end of the week, actually."

Pansy's mouth fell open. "Wait, what? Didn't you listen to me this morning? You can't send me out to those encampments you fucki— I mean, you're...you're too good a person to do that. Please. I'm scared to go there. I'm so scared."

She widened her eyes to feign innocence, her mouth going pouty, bottom lip quivering. _Save__-Me-I'm-Just-A-Wee-Helpless-Female_.

He didn't buy it; for the most part. Harry was still a sucker for a girl in distress, always had been. She probably knew that. "You'll — you'll be perfectly fine. I've worked it out with the Ministry; I paid them to hire more wizard security, and... you'll be safe there."

Pansy clutched her brandy, her mind seeming to be going a mile a minute. Kreacher walked off making sad, clicking noises with his tongue, leaving them alone.

Harry didn't look at her; he busied himself with taking off his jacket, putting his glassware in the sink, toeing off his shoes.

"If you let me stay, I can help you."

He looked up at her, mildly curious.

She had dropped the scared and vulnerable act for one of shrewdness, her flat green eyes glinting.

"Help? Help how? By drinking all my alcohol? Irritating me into migraines? Not that helpful, as it goes," he replied, unable to resist a dig.

Pansy stared at him coolly. "I have quite a bit of information on certain individuals you lot are trying to track down. You..._Aurors_." she spat the word derisively.

Harry snorted. "We're doing fine, thanks. It's only a matter of time before we get them all — "

"Is it?" she sat up, looking like she did that morning, pleading her case. "Shacklebolt may not be as big an idiot as other Ministers we've had, but this goes deep. People are lying about being _Imperius-_ed, others were never found out at all. Death Eater allegiances pervaded the Ministry; these are all people attracted to power, remember. You'd have to know the families well, the connections well, the legends and micro-nepotisms — Well, you'd have to be me." She smirked, sure she had convinced him. "Just think of all those bad, bad people you could single-handedly put away. Get a bit of that former glory back, I'm sure you've been gagging for the attention."

Harry frowned but ignored her jab. "Why would you help the same Ministry that has your parents detained for, who knows how long?"

She didn't drop her gaze. "And what do you think dear old mummy and daddy are doing there now? Singing like canaries. We adapt, we survive, we foresee the winds of change before they even shift in that direction; that's the Parkinson way."

"You mean you flip-flop, betray your friends and take whatever road is easiest."

She sank back down onto the couch, but looked haughty. "Say what you will, Potter. But after aligning myself with Death Eaters and watching them all fall, I'm now very much alive, staying in the home of the most famous wizard of our generation, drinking his brandy, and not being raped in my sleep. I'd call that a victory."

Harry pinched the skin above his nose, feeling a headache coming on. "It's too late to think about this now. I'm going to bed."

He felt Pansy's eyes on him as he headed for the stairs.

"Hey, Potter, you planning any trips to America anytime soon?"

He stopped, turned around in bewilderment.

She was perched like a bird, crimson fingernails drumming against her glass. _Clinkclinkclink_.

"...No? Why?"

Pansy shrugged, laid back down. "I have a feeling it's going to be a bit...dicey across the pond this year. Just getting some vibes from that country; I'm highly superstitious, you know. But don't mind me, if you really want to go, you should go."

"But I don't want to go."

"Oh now, come on, don't let me frighten you away from it."

"I'm not frightened."

"Oh, good! Glad to hear you're so keen. I hear New York is delightful in the summer. Tickets are cheaper if you buy them now."

Harry glitched, turned towards the stairs and turned back again, bewildered. Maybe this was just how Slytherins talked to each other. "Wha...? Whatever. I'm going to bed."

Her hand fluttered over the sofa in farewell. "Nighty night, Potter," and then she began to sing, giggly and wet, sounding drunk for the first time: "_Start spreading the news...I'm leavin' today..."_

Harry climbed the short wooden flight of his stairs, disturbed, as Pansy continued to croon behind him. She made the song sinister, shuddersome.

"_I want to be a part of it...New York, New Yooork!"_

* * *

A/N: What do you think of the surprise guest? I find Pansy really interesting (and it doesn't hurt that the actress her plays her in HBP and beyond is smokin' hot) and she'll play a significant part in showing the characters a world outside their own. I think JK's treatment of Pansy was petty considering she used her as a symbol of all her old bullies, and was able to find it in her heart to redeem both Snape and Draco in canon, so what is it about Pansy that she hates so much? Anyway, I want to give Pansy a little more depth than that. She's still an asshole, but ya know, an asshole we can understand.

Thank you for reading and for your reviews! Feel free to keep them coming :)


	6. Secrets Beget Lies

A/N: Hey! Big thanks to my reviewers and followers: happy to hear you guys were surprised by Pansy. I dropped a hint about her being part of the plot back in chapter 2, and I'm excited for the directions I can take with her in the story. Enjoy!

* * *

_Half baked girl_  
_Hey, I'm hardly surprised_  
_Snake eyes disguise everybody's lies_  
_Faded nail marks on pale thighs _

_And an awkward secret that someone denies_  
_And now you're trying to get yourself back in_  
_Come on in._

"Family Friend" - The Vaccines

* * *

Harry could not sleep. There was an unbearably tight coil in his chest that made his skin feel clammy and his stomach nauseous. He blamed it on the strange presence in his house, infecting his space, his home. Reminding him of the night Death had claimed him, if only for a moment. Sometimes he worried he really had died that night, and this was hell, which he shared with all his fallen classmates. But Hermione — Ron, Ginny — they would never be in hell, could never be in hell, and this thought always shook him back to reality.

Tired of twisting in his sheets futilely, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and left his bedroom. As he padded down the hall, trying to remember if he still had any chocolate biscuits left, he heard a clattering noise followed by a swear coming from Pansy's room. Her gaslight was still on, and Harry quickly drew his wand before charging inside.

A desk that normally sat in the corner of the room had been pushed diagonally, and she had been on her knees behind it, doing something with her hands. She snapped up, widening herself as best she could to hide what was behind her. She glowered at him.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you you should knock before entering a lady's bedroom?" she snarled.

"Lucky there aren't any ladies in here." Harry circled around, but she blocked his view. "What are you hiding?"

"You wouldn't want to know," she rose to her full height, which was still quite slight, and a malevolent look crossed her features. "You wouldn't believe what kind of Dark Artifacts my family carries in its name. Things that would crawl into your skull, haunt your nightmares and make your blood run cold as - "

Harry rolled his eyes. "_Accio Pansy's Secret." _

The contents from behind her flew into his hand. He struggled a bit to hold on to them all: they were mere pieces of paper.

She lunged at him. "You filthy half-blood! Give those back!"

Harry threw up a quick shield charm and turned his back to her, poring over the papers. They were letters. He ignored her shrieks as he read the one on the top; its writing fluid yet dark, as if the sender pressed very hard into his quill as he wrote.

_Dear Pansy, _

_I wanted to extend my gratitude for the Galleons you sent, we truly did need them, and I sincerely hope it was not too much of a strain for you. I can't tell you where we are. It's too dangerous for the both of us. Things are still difficult, we're running out of connections and places to stay as so many of our old allies are being placed in Azkaban. Mother is holding up all right, but Father is barely coping. It's driving me mad. Some days I truly hate him.__  
_

_I do miss you. I swear I do. I apologize for not writing you more frequently, and you've expressed your worry more than enough, so you can kindly discontinue the barrage of concerned letters. I do think of you often. All the time. I swear. And I want to see you, but Mother says we can't return to the country just yet _—

Harry skipped to the bottom of the page, to see the phrase _With Love_ crossed out and barely legible, replaced with a more indifferent _Signed_

_D.M._

Draco Malfoy wrote love letters?

He probably would have laughed if he didn't then turn to see Pansy visibly shaking with rage, breathing hard. He placed the letters on the ground, not daring to take the shield down to hand them to her when she still looked like she wanted to tear out his throat.

"You don't have to hide them, I won't read them," he muttered, looking at the floor. He backed away before taking down the shield, still noting the murder in her gaze.

"Bastard!" she called after him when he shut the door.

Wearily, Harry descended the stairs. He was surprised at the letters, as he had been so certain her and Malfoy's relationship at school had been shallow at best and manipulative at worst. But he supposed even people as terrible as Pansy were capable of developing feelings. The thought struck him as both funny and nauseating.

When he discovered that he had, in fact, a couple of biscuits left in the tin, he heard a popping noise from behind him.

"Harry?" Hermione said, voice wavering. Harry turned to look at her; she was in a pair of flannel pajamas, her hair unkempt and tousled, eyes wide and bloodshot.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

He barely had enough time to ask her this before she flung herself into his arms. He held her and felt her entire body tremble while she clung to him so desperately it hurt.

"Hermione? What happened?" he patted her on the back, at a loss for what else to do.

She buried her face in his chest. Her words were muffled and she appeared be having difficulty drawing breath. "N-nothing. I'm all right. Just wanted to, um, I just wanted to see you."

And then she was kissing him, her lips pressed hard against his, more aggressive than usual. He felt the softness of her tongue slide across his lower lip, and he opened his mouth to her to return the kiss, counting the seconds until he would pull away. Ten seconds seemed fair, seemed fine.

For those few seconds he let himself enjoy this; the warmth of her tongue, the feeling of her hands gliding across the planes of his chest, heating his body with fire and then leaving him with goosebumps when they left.

But when she slid her hand down the front of his pants, he grabbed her wrist and stopped her.

"Hermione…"

She was still leaning against his body. "What?" she murmured against his mouth, lips just barely brushing his.

He took a step back, the feel of her body making his brain fuzzy and his cock stir.

"Not tonight," he said, still thinking of Ginny, the Burrow, Ron; the promise of things like family and home and forever.

What he had been _meaning _to say was, _Not tonight...and never again. _(Cue the rain and sad, sad violins.)

But the latter portion of his sentence died in his throat when her eyelashes fluttered in that way that made Harry sure that he must be the sun, because nobody could look so astral without its raw brilliance shining down upon them.

Hermione stared into nothing over his shoulder, and then nodded. Suddenly nervous-looking, she crossed and uncrossed her arms before clearing her throat and saying, "Oh. Okay. That's...that's fine." Though her eyes were still watery she smiled, and joked weakly, "I guess plaid isn't very sexy, eh?" gesturing to her lumpy pajamas.

Harry laughed and tried to tease her to keep the mood light, even though he was feeling decidedly heavy. "Yeah, what's up with that? I thought girls always slept in bras and corsets."

"Oh, yeah, all my corsets are at the dry cleaner's. With, you know, the rest of my leather G-strings."

"Ah. Pity."

She smiled and then scratched the back of her neck, looking around awkwardly. "Sorry, then. I can leave, if you want me to."

"You don't have to," Harry said quickly. That was okay, right? The two of them just hanging out together? They were friends first, after all. They could stay up and talk in the middle of the night. Surely that was normal friendly behavior. "It's just that I...I spent all day at the Burrow...with Ginny...so...tonight I just can't really — "

Hermione waved her hand for him to stop. "You don't have to explain yourself or anything. I get it. It's fine. I'm fine."

She didn't look fine.

"Do you want some tea or something?" he asked.

She gave him a small smile tinged with an emotion he couldn't pick up on, and nodded.

Harry lit the kettle with his wand and tried to help her sit down, as she still appeared to be quite shaken up, but she batted him away.

"I assure you, I did not suddenly turn to glass overnight," she grumbled, but then added, softer, "Sorry about this. It's been a long time since I went to bed alone. I get a bit…" she made a vague hand motion, but Harry understood.

"It's all right. My door's always open, Hermione. You can always come to me." _Me, not Ron,_ he thought deplorably before he could stop himself.

She smiled at him with gratitude. "Yeah, I know. It's mutual."

They stared at each other, and for a moment, it was just too intense for Harry. He felt like he was supposed to say something, something very momentous and meaningful, but he didn't know what it was or how to say it or if he even wanted to. It was just too...much.

So he changed the subject.

"So how are the Grangers?" he asked brightly. "Did they smother you in sugar-free candy again?"

But her smile fell, and Harry wished he hadn't asked.

"They're...it's tense around them. They're still afraid of me." Hermione wrapped her arms around herself as if warding off the cold.

"I'm sure they're just afraid _for _you — "

"No." And her eyes were sharp on him. "They're terrified of me, of what I can do. What I can do to them. We don't even talk about magic anymore, they can't stand to hear it." Hermione looked down at her hands as if she could see dirt on them. "Sometimes I catch them staring at me. Just staring. It makes my skin feel like it's crawling with bugs."

The kettle screamed and Harry fetched two mugs to pour the boiling water into, trying to think of something to say. When he set down Hermione's cup in front of her, she didn't even seem to register that it was there.

"I'm sorry about them," he paused as he sat down. "Sometimes I think it's almost easier for me not to have parents." Harry knew he sounded self-pitying but went on anyways. "No one's there to be disappointed in me."

That snapped Hermione out of her introspection; she leaned forward and said fervently, "Don't ever say that, Harry. You were — are — wonderful. You saved us. Your parents would be so proud of you they wouldn't be able to stand it. I'm proud. I'm proud of you."

He couldn't meet her eyes, so he stared at her untouched tea. "Yeah...no, you're probably right. Sorry I'm being weird. Nights are still hard."

Harry looked up to see how suddenly unsettled she looked. "Yeah," she agreed in a choked voice. "Nights are really hard."

There were tears in her eyes again, and Harry distantly wondered if she ever went a day without crying. If maybe that was his fault.

He led the way to his couch so they could sit by the fire. The warmth of the flames and the tea in their hands burned away their anxiety as they huddled together, closer than they needed to be.

"Did you know I crave cigarettes now?" Hermione told him after a while, curled up against his body. Harry laughed, not being able to imagine such a thing dangling from Hermione's lips.

"What?"

"I've never had one in my life, but...I don't know. I think I just need something to do with my hands."

At that, Harry took her hands in his, and then hissed. "Christ, they're freezing."

She tried pulling away and putting them back in her lap, but Harry held them firm, and brought them up to his mouth to try to warm them with his breath. "Were you making igloos before you came over?"

Hermione shrugged, and then said, a little embarrassed, "It's a...it's a trick for anxiety. I read about it in my mum's Psychology Today. You hold ice in your hands and project your worries onto the ice, and watch them melt away." She paused, and then added, "I just so happen to have quite a lot of worries, which required a lot of ice."

He stared at her. "Did it work?"

"Obviously not," she said, leaning her head back against him again. "Since I'm here."

Did that mean that he was a worry, or that he was melting her worries?

Probably both.

Harry swallowed and tried taking his hands away, but this time Hermione wouldn't let go. He let out a breath, settled back, and in this way they slowly, unintentionally, drifted off to a peaceful sleep; Harry holding Hermione's trembling hands until they were still.

When Harry's eyes once again opened, a bare set of female legs was in front of him. Normally, this wouldn't be a bad sight. If it weren't for the person they belonged to.

"Well, this is cozy," Pansy intoned, bringing her cup of coffee to her lips. Harry lurched up, jostling Hermione's head which had been on his lap. He rubbed his eyes while Hermione straightened up, trying to repress the whir of panic in his brain.

"Good morning, Granger. Have a nice night?" An arch of the eyebrows. Another knowing sip.

"M-morning, Pansy," Hermione mumbled.

"Sorry, Potter, is the rule about me not being inside while she's here still in effect for overnight visits? Should I put a tent up outside for the future?" She smiled saccharinely.

Harry stood and brushed by her, his brain struggling to catch up with his mouth. "Don't be ridiculous. Hermione had a fight with her parents and stopped by to talk about it. We just fell asleep on accident, it's not like it'll happen again." It sounded lame even to him, but he hoped it was believable. It was mostly true, after all.

Harry glanced behind him to see Pansy still eyeing Hermione as she walked away from the couch.

"I should probably get back before my parents realize I've gone…" Hermione muttered, looking at the floor.

"Nonsense!" Pansy cried genially, eyes mischievous. "It's still early, and I've already asked Kreacher to set another breakfast for you. Let's gab."

Hermione stood fast. "I don't have much of an appetite around you, Pansy."

Pansy sat down to her meal of hot cereal and toast and pouted. "Granger, I'm hurt. At least tell me how those Muggle folks of yours are doing. Better than mine, I presume."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. "That's no one's fault but their own. We've all made our own choices."

Pansy looked pointedly from Harry to Hermione. "So it would seem."

Harry felt sticky with sweat and paranoia. Visibly distressed, Hermione ran her fingers through her curly hair and straightened up. "Goodbye, Harry. Um, I'll see you later tonight at my flat? I'm going to come home early, I think. You, me and Ron can do dinner. If you want."

He looked after her sadly. "Sounds good. Bye, Hermione."

"Bye, Granger! I'll miss you, sweetums!" Pansy called brightly. Hermione scowled as she Disapparated.

Harry glared at Pansy, who began eating cheerfully.

"Isn't it tiring being so horrible all the time?" he spat at her.

"Not in the least. It's one of the many things I'm extremely accomplished at."

He turned his back on her to drink his coffee and stare out at the morning light through his window. He was already looking forward to seeing Hermione again.

"So, Potter, you and Granger — "

He interrupted her quickly not only because he didn't want her finishing her thought, but also because he had actually wanted to ask her something for quite some time. "Why were you at Lavender Brown's birthday party? I mean, it wasn't really a party, but, you know. You went to the Leaky Cauldron with her friends. Why?"

He turned around to see that he had actually taken her by surprise, but then her face resettled into its usual pompous, sullen form. She shrugged. "I've known Lavender since we were children. Pureblood families stick together, like I told you. So we kind of grew up together, in a way. She was always irritating and simple, but…" She shrugged again, taking another bite of her oatmeal. "Whatever. I don't pass up on opportunities to get drunk."

She returned her attentions to her food, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief as he sat down for his. She seemed to have dropped the subject. But halfway through their silent breakfast, she spoke again.

"You and Granger seem awfully — "

"You know if you want, you could use my owl to send letters to Malfoy again. I won't mind." He talked over her, glad he had this ace in the hole. Her expression darkened.

"That's not necessary."

"Really, I don't care, it's not a big deal."

"You imbecile. It's no longer _necessary._" She threw her napkin on the table and stomped away, clashing her chair into the table in anger. Harry was a bit annoyed since he thought he had been doing something nice, but either way, at least she wasn't asking about Hermione. As he chewed, he wondered what had happened between Malfoy and Pansy to create their rift.

"Master."

Harry yelped and jumped in his skin to see that Kreacher had snuck up behind him again.

"Kreacher! Yes, what is it now?" he asked, his heart still racing.

Kreacher sneered. "Oh, Kreacher just thought that Master Potter might want to read today's _Daily Prophet _with his breakfast."

He handed Harry the paper. He was on the cover again, something that he should be used to by now but wasn't. The headline made his insides feel cold. **"HARRY POTTER'S SUPPOSED SYMPATHY FOR DEATH EATERS."**

The icy sensation only worsened as he read on.

"_In an odd turn of events, sources indicate that Harry Potter has volunteered over 10,000 Galleons in protection of Death Eaters stored in Ministry encampments. Eustace Crane, head of the Ministry's Dark Wizard Disciplinary Commission offers his story to the _Prophet.

'_It was very strange, indeed.' Eustace says while filing the proper paperwork for donations of this size. 'Harry Potter and his friend Ronald Weasley came in unexpectedly, appearing to be very agitated. They ordered for more security, worried that the Death Eaters might be susceptible to attack. While I assured them there was no need for worry, they were still steadfastly insistent on donating the extremely sizable sum. Very suspicious if you ask me, but considering who was asking...I eventually obliged.' _

_While this is all the information we have at the present, this does raise some concerns. Is there someone Potter is trying to protect? Or, more likely, someone who he believes is attempting to escape? There are quite a few conspiracies swirling around, and the Wizarding community is largely on edge in believing that either Potter or the Ministry is hiding something. It's also interesting to note that Weasley, who is a pureblood, accompanied Potter on their controversial excursion while their well-known friend Hermione Granger (Muggle-born) did not. Perhaps she did not approve? _

_Now, for all he's done for the Wizarding world, we are willing to give Harry Potter the benefit of the doubt. But for how long?"_

Harry groaned.

"Is Master displeased? Kreacher was very happy to read the article. Master did an excellent job in protecting the pureblood race."

It took all of Harry's will to not push Kreacher to the ground. His hands tightened around the paper in his effort to retain his violence. "Get away, Kreacher."

Kreacher shuffled away to his cupboard, giggling wheezily. Harry threw away the paper and wearily started clearing his own dishes plus Pansy's. It was then that his fireplace crackled, and he turned, wondering why Hermione was coming back so soon.

Instead, Kingsley Shacklebolt stepped out of the green flames. His presence, large, assuming, clad in brightly colored robes, seemed to fill half the room.

"Is now a good time to speak with you, Harry?" he asked, voice slow and controlled. Exasperated, Harry wondered why Ministry officials had a knack for coming to see him while he was still in his bloody jim jams.

"Uh, sure. I could get dressed..."

"No, that's all right, I'll only be here a moment."

His eyes fell onto the _Prophet _in Harry's trash. "I take it you saw the article, then."

Harry grimaced and nodded. Kingsley promptly retrieved it from the garbage and straightened its creases.

"Most unfortunate, is it not?" he said as if commenting on something entirely unrelated to the both of them. "The public is...quick to panic these days."

"Yeah, well, it had to be done. It didn't exactly seem like the Ministry cared that there were problems with the way they were handling the prisoners," Harry said coldly, feeling like a child trying to avoid reprimanding before Kingsley.

Kingsley put down the paper. "Listen, Harry. I am not here to prosecute you. The Ministry will accept any benevolence it can at this time. While I would prefer if it went to a different cause...it is moot. I am only here to advise against you speaking to the press about this."

"Why?"

"Because it is far better for these things to be left alone, for the public to forget about. We will take care of your concerns. There is no need to arouse suspicion or contempt towards you or the Ministry," Kingsley said, the deep baritone of his voice both authoritative and assuring.

Despite the Minister's words, Harry was beginning to feel a bit suspicious himself. But considering he had no intentions of speaking publicly of this anyways…

"Fine. I mean, yeah, I won't speak to any press."

Kingsley nodded professionally. "Most excellent. I wish to meet with you again at the Ministry this week, Harry. I've...I've learned you received a new roommate. Am I right in assuming that she will provide some worthy information for us?"

Harry screwed up his face. "Uh...maybe…but Pansy's a little..."

But Kingsley was already departing, and Harry noticed that before Kingsley turned completely into the flames, his face looked anguished, almost haunted. He didn't know what to make of it.

The rest of the morning passed without much incident, besides a small pool of reporters gathering around his house like vultures. Harry ignored them by catching up on the tedious licensing paperwork he had let pile up. Pansy just hid in her room until Harry knocked on her door in the afternoon.

"Parkinson?"

"_Piss off!_"

"Just going to the store, do you need anything?"

"...Whiskey."

"Okay."

Considering this was the last day of Easter break, Harry met up with Ginny to do some shopping. She was a bit withdrawn from him today, no doubt due to his actions at the Burrow, but Harry tried his best to keep things genial. He was proud that he had resisted Hermione the night before. Surely, he could continue to do so and become the kind of man that Ginny deserved.

And yet, as the short time spent together wore on, Harry again disappointed himself.

"What are you doing tonight? Figured we could go out for one last night of my freedom before I start revising for N.E.W.T.s," Ginny said, walking through the streets carrying a couple of his grocery bags.

"Oh, um…" Harry didn't want to be forced away from his plans with Hermione and Ron, but he also didn't want Ginny to feel like he was blowing her off. "Ron and I are having dinner."

"Okay, cool, I'll come too. Let's do a breakfast theme!" she said cheerfully. "Mum got a new waffle-maker so I'll whip some up. Do you like them plain or...plain? I can also make them plain."

Harry winced and tried to laugh. But he was reluctant to spend time with Hermione and Ginny together; his discomfort would surely be palpable. "Sorry, Ginny, but...Hermione might come back early, and I don't think she's up for seeing anyone besides us. You know she's been a bit...fragile lately."

Ginny suddenly stopped in her tracks. Harry turned back to her hesitantly and watched as her eyes narrowed into matching angry slits, her face turning red with suppressed feeling. "And what's that supposed to mean? The sight of me is going to _break _her? Because I'm such an insensitive cad? I told you, Harry. Hermione is my. Friend. Too. Why are you trying to edge me out?"

"I'm not, I swear I'm not," Harry said frantically, trying to put out the fire. "I know you're friends. It's just, besides Ron, Hermione is really most comfortable around me, so…"

"Oho!" Ginny laughed humorlessly, dangerously. "I see. And I suppose that's _your_ duty to fix her right up, then, right? Always so selfless, you are. Well, what about me?"

He stared confusedly at her and tried to take her hand to move her away from the open area; people were beginning to take notice of the famous couple's contention. She snapped her arm away from his with a lethal hiss.

"What are you talking about? What do you mean, what about you?" He spoke to her in hushed tones, maneuvering his body to the side of her so at least people across the street couldn't see her fuming.

Ginny pushed him with great force and he staggered backwards, the bags in his hands nearly spilling into the road.

"I'm fucking fragile, too!" she cried in a choked voice. Her hands were clenched into fists by her sides, her eyes huge and wild. "Just because I'm not blubbering about it all the time doesn't mean I'm okay! Hermione didn't even lose anyone in the war! I'm — " She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them again they were flat. "Nothing about my life is right. Nothing is how it's supposed to be. It's all I can do to hold myself together and pretend everything is fine and you don't even see it, you don't even _try _to see it! All because I'm not drowning in self-pity like she is. Merlin, I really don't ask much of you, Harry, because I try to understand and I try to be patient but sometimes I just want you to see me! Why can't you just _see_ me?"

What the fuck was she talking about?

For the first time in a long time, maybe for the very first time, Harry was genuinely angry with Ginny.

He could feel a vein in his neck pulsing in tension as he glared at her. "Look, I'm sorry I haven't checked in with your feelings lately," he said through his teeth, straining to keep his voice down. "But Hermione is not just feeling sorry for herself! She's struggling with something real, and for that matter, so am I!"

Ginny glared thunderously at him. "What? What is it you're _struggling _with? What is it that's so difficult that you can't talk to me, can't talk to anyone, makes you talk bollocks like you did yesterday — "

"I DON'T KNOW!" he shouted. Everyone in the vicinity turned to stare at him, whispered behind their hands. He was beyond caring.

Ginny's chin quivered, like maybe she might cry, but she just stood up straighter and dropped his groceries to the ground. A melon rolled almost comically across the street, and Harry was nearly feeling hysterical enough to laugh.

"Right," she said, prickly. "Well when you figure it out, feel free to write to me at Hogwarts. Until then, don't bother."

She turned on the spot and Disapparated with an ominous _crack_.

It was like she took all the oxygen in the space with her when she left, and Harry couldn't breathe properly. Still shaking, he picked up his bags, his brain ringing in panic. He tried to ignore the curious eyes boring into his back as he closed his eyes and Disapparated as well.

He figured he was in shock when he arrived home. He felt numb; emotionally and physically. He imagined he could get hit in the skull by a Bludger and wouldn't even feel it. Methodically, Harry removed each item from its bag: a bundle of carrots, a bottle of pumpkin juice, raw lamb, treacle tart, eggs, a jug of whiskey...he listed them all in a bizarrely focused fashion and placed them on his counter.

The whiskey was snatched up. He looked around to see Pansy observing it critically.

"Ugh, you got the cheap stuff. I'm far too delicate for this." She twisted the lid and drank a sizable gulp regardless. Her face screwed up in displeasure. "Just as I suspected. You have terrible taste, Potter."

"Sorry," he muttered, not actually listening. He replayed the scene with Ginny again and again. A thought struck him that they hadn't _actually _broken up. She had still told him he could write to her at Hogwarts, after all…

"'Sorry'? That's it?" she sized him up while taking another sip. "What's up with you?"

Harry didn't exactly feel like delving into the intricacies of his romantic relationships with Pansy Parkinson. "Nothing. You just annoy me." He summoned Kreacher to clear away his groceries while he headed for his bathroom.

Pansy snickered and followed him on his way to the stairs. "That's no way to treat a guest."

"You're not a guest." He spun on her, glad to have someone he could take out his frustrations on. "You're supposed to be an informant. Useful. Not hoarding stupid love letters and getting drunk at four in the afternoon. You're acting like a child."

Her grip on the bottle tightened. Harry had a feeling she was tempted to throw it at him but she didn't want to waste the alcohol. "Seems to me like I'm not the only one in this house not engaging in strictly professional behavior. Tell me Potter, is Granger as boring in the sack as she is in her normal life?"

"I am NOT shagging Hermione!" he yelled in her face, so forceful even he could believe he was telling the truth. "And if you ever suggest that again I'll throw you out. As well as retract my donation to the Ministry."

Her mouth opened and closed a couple times like a fish. Harry knew he was bluffing, but she didn't have to know that.

"Fine," she spat, taking a step away from him. "I'm _sorry_."

Now Harry was shocked. He had never in his life expected an apology from Pansy, even if it was an insincere one.

"Alright," he said stiffly.

She knocked against his shoulder as she ran up to her bedroom. Before she disappeared into it, however, she turned back.

"His letters aren't stupid, you know." she said, something like sadness in her voice. "They're not." And she slammed her door shut.

Harry shut his eyes, focused on his breathing. Counted to 10. Then 20. Then 60. When he felt like he had returned to himself he washed his face in the bathroom sink, pulled on a fresh shirt, and stepped into his fireplace wondering when exactly he had become so adept at making women hate him.

Seeing Ron was, quite frankly, a relief. Harry was tired of thinking and feeling. He wanted to laugh at crude jokes and eat food that would clog his arteries and drink things that would make him stupid. Ron was more than happy to oblige him.

"...so then McLaggen starts snogging the bird, and the second he does, I swear to Merlin, the beauty charm she was using wears off and she turns into this fat old hag. I'm talking boils, and hair where hair should _never_ be. He goes in to grab her tit, and then he's just like - "

Ron pantomimed Cormac groping blindly and then freezing in disgust.

"He pulls back, gets a good look at her, and yaks all over himself!"

Harry laughed hard, the gin in his hand sloshing around.

"Oh, God. Those charms ought to be illegal," Harry said, still grinning. He reckoned that no matter how much time passed, he'd never grow to like Cormac.

"Not if it gets me stories like that!" Ron cried jovially. "And it's not like we have to worry about it. We don't have to scope the pubs for strange. Makes monogamy seem pretty good, actually."

Harry's grin quavered. "Yeah."

"So did Kingsley visit you today?" Ron asked, refilling his glass.

"Yeah, how did you know?"

"Came by here, too."

Harry made a knowing grunt. "Told you to keep quiet too, did he?"

"Keep quiet?" Ron's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "No, what do you mean?"

"Wait — what did he want to talk to you about?"

Ron sat back, stretching out his long legs. "He was telling me about the regrouping of Voldemort's supporters." His tone seemed almost bored.

Harry sat too, surprised. Why hadn't Kingsley told him this?

"What else did he say?" Harry asked. "Do we have any leads?"

Ron shrugged. "Dunno, said we'd discuss it more later on. Really don't see what the fuss is about - just some bitter wannabes complaining that they lost. I'm not worried."

"But Ron, you don't even know — "

A sudden _pop _behind him interrupted his sentence. Quicker than anything (and like he'd done so many times), Ron cleared away the evidence of alcohol with a flick of his wand.

Hermione entered their dining room to join them, looking slightly more at peace than she did last night but not by much, with her bags levitating behind her. And damn her, did she still look beautiful.

"Welcome home!" Ron said, beaming at her. Harry offered a small smile as well.

"Hi," she said quietly, crossing over to Ron to kiss him. "I missed you."

Harry missed his drink.

"Brought you guys something," she said, looking more cheerful. She drew her wand and summoned a small bag that landed with a plop on the table. Once opened, it revealed a wide selection of Muggle candy. Cadbury chocolate eggs and buttons, gummy bears, Kit-Kats, chocolate oranges, licorice wheels, Snickers bars and more came tumbling out.

Ron poked a package of gummy bears as if it would bite him. "Interesting."

But Harry laughed and grabbed the pack of chocolate buttons, a memory jogging in his brain.

"Dudley used to love these," he said, popping open the box. "Whenever my Aunt and Uncle wouldn't give me enough food, I'd nick these from him. They thought we had a rat problem for years."

He chuckled again but was met with a wall of cheerless silence. Ron and Hermione looked uncomfortable. Well, Ron looked uncomfortable; Hermione looked like she was suppressing rage. Harry had forgotten that this was now a normal reaction to when he spoke of the Dursleys.

A biographical article had been released a couple months after the Final Battle detailing how horrid it had really been living with them, chronicling the abuse and the neglect and even the cupboard, and now everyone he knew would avert their gaze and stumble over themselves at any mention of his childhood. He had spilled the beans, so to speak, during the short period of time when everyone was finally starting to feel like the war was really over, that it was time to really celebrate, and Harry and all his friends had gotten sloshed at a Ministry party. A young reporter had approached him, perky and flirty, and wheedled the story out of him while he barely knew what he was even saying. He just remembered her approaching him with a drink, him grinning at her, shaking his head _no _and then _come on_ and then _all right, I'll just say one thing _—, and then shaking all over as she walked away, his throat hoarse, her parchment full of notes.

Since then, he'd taken to mostly drinking in private. He preferred his life with his adoptive family kept as a secret, but he wasn't really afforded many of those these days. Just one.

"I'll always hate them for making you live like that," Hermione declared. Harry shrugged, surprised. He couldn't remember ever hearing Hermione say she hated someone before.

"...Chocolate and fruit? What plonker thought that up?" said Ron, breaking the tension. A slip of his hand made the chocolate orange roll out of his grip, however, and when he got up to retrieve it from the floor he swayed and stumbled into the leg of the table.

Hermione immediately jumped to her feet. "How much have you had to drink tonight?" she screeched. Ron spun around, suddenly defensive.

"Nothing! Bloody hell, not even allowed to trip in this house without being interrogated."

Hermione turned to glare at Harry now. Her eyebrows shot up, and he felt himself shrink under her stare.

"Harry?" she demanded.

Harry made a noncommittal noise and Hermione just closed her eyes and sighed, furious. Nobody moved for a tense moment.

"Anyways…" said Ron, rolling his eyes. "If you'll excuse me, I have to use the restroom."

Hermione stared intently at him as he left; Harry directed his gaze to the table, to the chocolate buttons that he no longer had to steal to eat. He looked at Hermione and wished she was like that chocolate; that he could have her without stealing her.

Okay, maybe he was drunk.

"I could just kill him sometimes," she said, exasperated. Harry tugged on her hand to get her to sit down again. She resisted at first, but eventually complied with another heavy sigh.

"Honestly, Hermione, it's not a big deal. After everything that's happened, pretty much everyone drinks...you should see a night out with Hagrid. Ron could be doing worse things."

At his words, both of their eyes went to their joint hands, and both of them released their grip. She stared at the table and looked like she was searching for patterns in the wood.

"You just don't understand, Harry. I can't bear to see him turn into a drunk."

Harry felt the need to defend his friend. "We all drank together before and you didn't have a problem with it then, that night after you and I went on our date — "

"Well, it's because I felt guilty wasn't it?" Hermione interrupted, looking fearfully for Ron. "I'm not proud of it."

There was another tense silence. Harry was so sick of them.

"Ginny and I had a fight today," he said slowly. "A bad one. I don't think it's _over_, over...but I don't know how to fix it." Hermione looked up at him with concern.

"Oh, Harry. What was it about?"

"You."

A sharp intake of breath. "You didn't. Please tell me you didn't."

He pressed his thumb into the wood, felt it give. Let her sweat for a second just because he was in that kind of mood.

"No, I didn't. But she's angry because...I'm not totally sure. Something about me being more sensitive to your emotions than to hers, I think."

Hermione closed her eyes and swallowed a few times, the violent relief on her face somehow making her look older.

"That's simple, Harry. She just needs to feel like a priority. You need to reassure her that she comes first, before other women. That'll solve it." Hermione sounded almost like her old self; giving Harry prudent advice on his girl troubles.

He swept a curl that had fallen in front of Hermione's face behind her ear. His hand lingered there, and she caught his gaze, her soft brown eyes making him melt. What _was _this thing that she was doing to him whenever she looked at him lately - this feeling of being out of his own body and simultaneously more tangible, more real than ever before?

"I don't think she does," Harry murmured. "That's the problem."

He couldn't read Hermione's expression, so his eyes fell to her lips. He leaned in and kissed her. It was the lightest of caresses; his lips just barely touched her impossibly soft ones before she pulled away and looked down.

"I'm sorry," she breathed. "Please don't hate me."

"Why would I hate you?"

"Because I'm ruining your life."

Harry brought his arms to rest on the table and laid his head on top of them. "I could never hate you. Even if I could, I wouldn't."

Hermione rested her own head on her palm and used the other to rub his back in slow, rhythmic circles. It felt lovely, warm; like he was somewhere safe.

"Besides," he mumbled against his arm. "I'm ruining your life, too." She stopped her movements for just a second, and then resumed them. Harry never wanted to move, her gentle touch made him feel like he was floating.

It was a strange realization. Harry had always thought that love would save the world; it was hope and joy and salvation. Light. No one ever told him love could destroy, devastate and leave you bleeding in its ruins.

But he quickly dropped this line of thinking because he didn't want to call this love. It would only make everything worse. He focused instead on the pleasurable sensation of Hermione's hand lightly massaging his muscles.

"Don't you think Ron's been gone a long time?" Hermione asked worriedly after a while, getting to her feet. Harry sat up and told her to wait while he checked instead.

When he reached the bathroom and pushed open the door, he groaned.

Ron was on the floor beside the toilet, an empty bottle of Firewhisky by his fingertips. Vomit clogged the bowl and there was some splattered on the ground and on the wall where he had missed. His entire body was convulsing with the shakes and his every breath sounded like he was in pain.

"C-cold..." he muttered pitifully. Not knowing what to do, Harry drew his wand and uttered a warming spell. The shaking stopped, but Ron retched into the toilet.

"What do I…? How can I help?"

To Harry's horror, Ron started crying. He laid down on his side and sobbed into the floor.

He started mumbling through his sobs, words Harry mostly couldn't make out except for a slightly firmer, "Fuck you, man," near the end.

Panic threatened to choke him out; it felt like something had reached inside his chest and squeezed his heart in an icy, agonizing grip. Harry couldn't think straight, couldn't think of anything besides a harrowing, horrifying: _Does he know? Did he see? _

He got to (fell to) his knees beside his friend, and put a trembling hand on his shoulder. "Ron...did you...what do you think I did?"

Ron batted his hand off and rolled onto his stomach, groaning, shuddering; and then he laughed. But it sounded like he was laughing at himself. "You ne'er do anything," he smeared the words against the limestone. "Yer — you're always okay. I can't be like y-you. Can't do this."

Harry still couldn't process the words because of the deep dread settling like a pit in his stomach, and before Ron could expound on what it was that he couldn't do, he heaved dryly, making horrible gagging sounds.

A wail rang out behind him.

"Ron!" Hermione cried. "Oh, you idiot!"

Hermione rushed to their bathroom cabinet and pulled out a draught of something Harry had seen before but couldn't remember the name of. Large tears dripped down her face as she squatted next to her fiance.

"H-hold his head back," she said. Harry obeyed numbly, keeping Ron's head still on the floor. Hermione tipped the vial into his mouth and he choked a bit, so she covered his mouth with her hand, a practiced motion. After he swallowed his eyes cleared, his body relaxed, and he gazed up at her.

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself?" she sobbed.

Ron reached up, held his palm against her cheek. "Sorry. Love you," he said quietly, and then promptly passed out. Hermione sniffed and wiped angrily at the tears on her face.

"Hermione, I...I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was this bad, I didn't know it was like this." said Harry, ashamed that he had put himself before Ron's health. Not for the first time, and probably not for the last.

Hermione didn't reply, just stood up and straightened her sweater. When Harry moved to haul Ron up to carry him to bed, she stopped him.

"No. I do this."

Hermione used a hover charm to lift Ron into a standing position mere inches off the ground. Taking his arm, she walked him to their bedroom. Harry watched them go, disturbed and wishing he knew how to handle everything that was happening to them now, everything they were doing to themselves and to each other. He knew how to solve puzzles, how to read people, how to fight and fuck and kill and die. But all of this?

He had no answers.

He walked to the doorway to their bedroom as if he wasn't in command of his feet and watched as Hermione tenderly wiped Ron's face with a towel. Again, as if pulled by an outside force, Harry turned and headed for their front door, words like _coward _floating in his head.

When he got home, Pansy was waiting for him.

"Potter." she said as a greeting, looking slouched and tired, the bottle of whiskey still glued to her palm. "Fancy a drink? The elf couldn't keep up with me."

Kreacher was snoring loudly on the ground outside his cupboard, drooling onto the tile. If Harry had been in a better mood, he'd have laughed.

Instead, he thought of Ron's shivering body on the bathroom floor, surrounded by his own sick. "No," he said somberly. "You can help yourself to the rest of the booze, if you want. I don't drink anymore."

Her lip curled. "Well, aren't you perfect."

He sighed. "Please, just...don't. Not tonight. I can't tolerate you tonight."

Drained, Harry tried ascending the staircase, but Pansy grabbed his arm.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it! Listen, I have names," she cried, sounding frantic and afraid. Her eyes were huge and the grip on his arm was vice-like. "Lots of them. I won't give you them all at once, I need leverage, but I swear you'll never be able to find them without my help, never. So if you send me away - "

Harry shook himself free of her. "Look — just, relax. No one's sending you away. Just let me go to sleep, alright?" He didn't at all like how she was looking at him; he now felt terrible for threatening her earlier. Seeing Pansy so frightened of angering him only worsened his guilt, and he couldn't help but resent her for it. "I'm just tired. That's all. I'm not going to kick you out."

Pansy eyed him distrustfully, but left him alone. "Don't fuck me over," she said fiercely.

Harry didn't reply. He wanted to promise that he wouldn't, but he didn't know who was safe from him anymore.

As he trudged to his bedroom, he forced his mind to sharpen, to think of a singular subject that wasn't about love or sex or betrayal; save himself of being buried beneath it all by compartmentalizing.

He fell into a fitful sleep thinking of Kingsley Shacklebolt, and the distressed look on his face that he hadn't wanted Harry to see.


	7. Itches to Scratch

Annnd we're back! Took a while I know, but with work, school, and a flare-up of my chronic illness, I wasn't really feeling the "muse" so to speak. Hopefully this chapter will make it up to you guys!

** Random Reader**, I've been considering commenting on this myself, so I'm glad you brought it up. I know Kreacher came around to the good side in canon, but honestly? I didn't like it. It's like, okay so Harry gave Kreacher a locket and treated him with basic human decency and Kreacher could suddenly overcome years and years of prejudice? So much so that he rallied other house-elves to fight Voldemort for him? I didn't buy it. It felt like J.K. trying to tie things in a neat bow that didn't necessarily fit. So I'm ignoring it, and a mean Kreacher is more fun to write anyways.

* * *

"_SEX AS A COPING MECHANISM  
__SEX AS A PERFORMANCE  
__SEX AS SELF HARM  
__SEX AS DELUSION  
__MY FEAR OF SEX CAN BE ASSIGNED TO  
__MY VOLUNTARY PARTICIPATION IN THE  
__DELUSION OF MY OWN PLEASURE  
__FORGING SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T COME NATURALLY  
__EMBODYING A PERFORMANCE  
__PERFORMING AN EXPERIENCE  
__BECOMING A FORM OF SELF HARM."_

-Cheyenne Sophia

* * *

Harry stared into the black pool of his coffee, waiting for the zing of caffeine to expunge the weariness from his head. He was trying to decide what terrible thing he should discover first on this fine, drizzly, depressing morning.

He could sit Pansy down, painfully and laboriously extract all the information he could from her before she snottily returned to her room, muttering bollocks about 'leverage.' Not a great way to start the day, in his opinion.

Or he could go directly to Kingsley, now, right now, demand answers to questions he did not yet have.

But what could he ask him, really?

"Kingsley, come on, man. I can tell something's off. A thing. Some thing. Tell me about the thing?"

"Kingsley, I _demand _that you tell me all of your secrets. Yeah, just...all of them? If you've got the time? I'm not sure which, exactly."

"Kingsley, I'm shagging my best friend who's engaged to my other best friend while I neglect my girlfriend who maybe isn't my girlfriend anymore and it's throwing me into a depressive state of self-loathing but I can't seem to stop myself, most likely due to a deepening need to self-sabotage that probably stems from one of the many mucked up aspects of my life. It might also be fueling my paranoia that you are manipulating me as a pawn of some larger plot that will soon unveil itself in the most horrible way possible. So...thoughts?"

He was still scowling when he heard the sound of someone Apparating at his doorway.

Harry was about to call out Hermione's name in question, but fortunately for him, Ron stepped into his kitchen before the incriminating word left his throat.

"Ugh," groaned Ron, rubbing his eyes. "Why does being an Auror mean getting up so early? I'm knackered. Got any coffee?"

Harry didn't meet his eyes, uncomfortable from the memory of watching Ron cry the night before. "Yeah, here, let me — "

Ron yawned and waved him off. "I got it, I got it."

Harry focused on his own mug as he listened to Ron prepare his. There was an awkward tension in the air. He realized he should probably have some sort of emotional heart to heart with his friend, and cringed at the prospect.

"Uh, Ron, so...how are you — "

"Look, Harry," Ron said as he sat across from him, "I'm sorry about last night. Total accident. Won't happen again." He took a grateful sip of his coffee. "I didn't do anything too bad, did I?"

Harry tried to keep his face ambiguous. "Nah, not too bad."

Ron sighed. "Hermione's well put out. I mean, I know she's in the right, but…" he rubbed his eyes again. "I don't know. It's just hard to hear sometimes. It's so constant."

Harry didn't reply to that. He had no interest in talking to Ron about Hermione or her nagging.

But still, he had to ask, he would be a right wanker not to ask: "Ron, um, just," Harry leaned forward and tried to look concerned without pitying. The result was a squish of his mouth and eyebrows while he partially rolled his eyes; which really didn't work out well at all since Ron suddenly looked like _he_ was worried Harry might be having a stroke. "Are you...okay? Is there anything...you need to talk about, or, anything bothering you?"

His friend twitched, and then plied a smile to his face. "I'm fine. I'm great. Come on, mate. You know me. I'm always good." He puffed out his chest a little as if to prove it.

Harry nodded as if he bought it, but dropped the subject. "Right. Good. So, are you just here for free coffee, or…?"

"Coffee's a bit of a generous word for this piss, but no. Kingsley sent me. Said I ought to come get you and head off to his office straight away. Wouldn't tell me why, though," Ron answered.

Harry crossed his arms. "Yeah, he's been doing a lot of that lately."

Ron gestured to the windows. "Reckon it's got something to do with those reporters out your door?"

Harry's mouth pursed to the side as he watched the small group of stragglers milling about, quills in hand, desperate for the report that may make their career. Their devotion to their obnoxious occupation was certainly annoying, but they didn't seem particularly menacing.

"I don't know. I think...I think there might be something — "

Before Harry could fully voice his concerns, Pansy entered the room. Ron visibly stiffened at the sight of her, and Harry turned to see her smirking at his reaction, dressed in only knickers and one of Harry's shirts.

"Ooh, lookey here, it's the Weasel. Merlin, every day is a Hogwarts reunion with you people, isn't it?" she quipped as she crossed the kitchen.

"Have you been nicking my things?" asked Harry, angry at the idea of Pansy rifling through his clothes.

"Oh, I didn't think you'd mind," she said airily, looking slightly irritated that she had to pour herself coffee without magic.

A sudden look of horror crossed Ron's features as he took in the scene. "Did...did you and her…?"

It took Harry a second to realize what he was talking about, and then felt extremely appalled at the accusation, although he really shouldn't have been. It wasn't as if he had that strong of moral character when it came to sex.

_Oh no, no, no, I'm only shagging _your _girlfriend, no one else, don't worry!_

"No, God, no," he assured, and then heard Pansy make a retching noise behind him.

"I'd sooner ram a hot poker up myself than go anywhere near that thing." She pointed to Harry's crotch. "Who knows where it's been."

Harry's jaw set, worried she would take this conversation somewhere he didn't want it going. "Lovely imagery there, Parkinson."

"Forgot how charming she was," Ron said dryly, although he looked relieved.

"Yeah, every day's more fun than the last."

Pansy flipped her hair and sneered. "Oh, please boys, not all at once." She descended upon the table and scraped her chair back across the floor loudly and slowly, watching Ron wince at the grating noise. _Skrrrrrrrrreeeech. _

She sat down as if she belonged there, with unearned confidence. "Trust me Potter, it's not like I _wanted_ to take your cheap, distasteful rags that you call clothing. But funnily enough, before the Ministry whisks you and your family away as assumed Dark Wizards, you don't get to pack up all your jim-jams."

Harry scoffed. "My condolences. Come on, let's just go," he said to Ron, not at all enthused about having a group chat, and Ron heaved himself to his feet with some difficulty.

Despite the gnawing sense of feeling babysat, Harry was eager for a meeting with Kingsley.

"All right," Ron replied, groaning to his feet. "See ya later, Pug-Face."

Pansy snarled, and then smiled.

"Oh, but we haven't even caught up yet!" she simpered, sauntering up to Ron. "How's life, then? Still living in a shoe with the rest of the Weasley brood? Well..." her smile slanted into a smirk, "At least now you have one extra space."

Harry blinked and Ron had pinned Pansy against the wall, his wand pointed at her neck.

"_Don't_," he thundered, his face twisted. "Don't ever say that again."

She swallowed hard, her eyes on his wand, wide in panic. They flickered to Harry's for just a moment and then returned, as if about to ask for his help and then thinking better of it. Harry had never seen her look so small.

It was just the tiniest bit satisfying.

Harry put his hand on Ron's shoulder, pulled back a bit. "Leave it. She's pathetic."

Ron remained where he was, his wand arm flexed so tightly it shook. His fingers dug into Pansy's shoulder for another moment, and then he finally stepped away from her with a grunt of disgust. Pansy trembled and then coughed out a laugh, her eyes shining with frightened tears.

"Dramatic much? Learn to take a joke," she sniffed, but couldn't seem to quite catch her breath.

"Apologize to him," ordered Harry, letting a hint of a threat play at his tone even though he knew he'd feel guilty about it later. But, whatever. She deserved it. "Now."

A vein in her neck twitched as she fought down her natural instinct to say something nasty.

She turned to Ron, spoke to him through clenched teeth. "I'm sorry, Weasley. I shouldn't have been so _insensitive_."

She glared at Harry. "Now if my jailer sees fit, I would like to return to my quarters."

Harry rolled his eyes. He worried that she would soon cause him some kind of cornea damage if he kept up this amount of eye rolling. "Go on, then."

She threw him another vicious look and then turned on her heel to leave the room.

Harry faced Ron, his hand still on his shoulder, worried that he'd be having a fit of some kind. His face was indeed still cherry red, the blood vessels popping in distress, but mostly, he looked puzzled.

"She apologized to me," he stated, monotone.

"Uh, yeah, only 'cause I told her to."

That seemed to confuse him more. "Parkinson's never apologized to anyone. Why would she do what you told her to?"

Harry shrugged, his mind already elsewhere, itching to go see Kingsley. "I told her if she didn't, you know, fall in line or whatever, I'd kick her out and take back my donation. So are you ready to go, or?"

Harry started turning but Ron stopped him, looking conflicted and, if Harry didn't know better, disappointed. "You said that to her?"

"Yeah...?"

Ron shifted his weight, uncomfortable. "Don't you think that's a bit dark, mate?"

Harry had never seen Ron look at him this way before. It was unsettling. "I didn't mean it. Obviously I wouldn't do that. And, what, _I'm _dark? You literally just drew your wand at her!"

Ron looked down, but Harry still caught that flicker of shame meant to be directed at him. "Well, I couldn't let her talk about Fred like that, could I? Look, I can't stand her either but, I'd never threaten to let her be...I mean, _Merlin_, Harry."

Unable to bear the look in his friend's eyes, Harry turned and Disapparated, feeling sick. If even Ron felt like Harry was being indecent, what did that say about the state of his moral compass?

He wondered if it had gone wonky after the first time he touched Hermione.

* * *

Harry stalked to Kingsley's office with purpose; that awful, familiar sensation in his gut persisting that something was being hidden from him.

That's what his life has taught him, hasn't it? No matter how bad things may seem, they can always get worse. And he could never leave it alone. He would always pick at that festering scab until his own blood spilt, both literally and metaphorically.

The door swung open easily, and a frazzled Kingsley looked up from his paperwork, appearing not even slightly surprised to see Harry's troubled face.

"Harry, good, you're here. I apologize if you felt as if I were 'fetching' you by sending Ron to accompany you, I merely did not wish to take any chances that you would not come immediately."

Harry's eyebrows pulled together, taking in the state of the Minister and his office. At first glance, everything seemed fine; there were no alarms blaring, no red-taped documents littering the floor, Kingsley was not beating his fists to his desk in a rage. But Harry knew Kingsley, knew that something was wrong by the way just a couple of half-eaten foodstuffs hadn't been vanished away, by the way his mouth turned down lazily at the corners as if he had not slept in a while, by the way his hands were restless and finicky.

"Why wouldn't I come?" Harry asked, challenging, slow.

Kingsley's dark eyes flashed to his for a moment and then went back to surveying the floating quill beside him that was scrawling frantically on parchment.

"Who knows? If you were feeling ill, overslept, perhaps found yourself drawn away by something else...there are endless possibilities on the subject."

With a wave of his hand he stopped the quill. It screeched to a halt and fell limply to his desk, allowing Kingsley to give his full attention to Harry.

"But since you are here, we do have some things to discuss."

Harry felt his pulse quicken at the prospect of new knowledge, a whisper of adrenaline.

"Like Voldemort's supporters regrouping?" he said hotly.

Kingsley became infuriatingly calm, apparently glad that Harry was following some script that Harry did not know he was following. "Yes, I was rather hoping Ron would fill you in on that. There have been such organizations discovered in Russia, China, France...enough places to have us feeling uncomfortable. There are rumors of them here, as well. We have Aurors looking into it, but the English groups have proved very discrete."

"And why didn't you just tell me about them yourself?"

Kingsley leaned back and chuckled once, a low sound that was self-awarely disingenuine. "You have someone in your home who's aligned with Death Eaters! I can't risk sharing such delicate information with Parkinson so near. One day of you not knowing all isn't much to ask for. As much as I respect and admire you, Harry, I cannot accord you with special treatment at the expense of public safety."

Harry tried to meet his eye, but failed. Kingsley seemed to know one of Harry's largest insecurities: Special treatment. That he was in his position because of what he did, and not who he was.

"I don't...I don't want special treatment, I just — "

"And it's actually Parkinson that I wish to discuss with you, Harry."

"Why haven't they been arrested?" Harry interjected, not to be distracted. "Voldemort's supporters. I haven't read or seen anything about the rest of the world's incarcerated Death Eaters. Nothing. You said they were discovered, so if we know who they are, where they are — "

Kingsley cut him off in turn, frowning that he was breaking his script. "I wish we could. But they actually haven't done anything _illegal_, strictly speaking. Right now, they're operating under the guise of 'traditionalist groups.' As you and I both know, 'traditional' translates directly to rather twisted views of blood supremacy, but…" Kingsley sighed wearily. "For now, they have propositioned no dangerous acts. For now, being the operative words."

Harry was getting tired of not getting straight answers. "Okay, so, what? You think they will sometime soon?"

"It is what I'm afraid of. You see, what worries me are these extremist groups of Muggle-born radicals. Perhaps you've heard of them? The most well-known call themselves the Mud Insurgents."

Harry's mind flashed to Pansy, to the fear clogging her throat at the thought of being expelled from the safety of his home. "Are they the ones who've been doing the...the 'avengement assaults'? You know..." Harry's mouth filled with spit, "...on pureblood women."

Kingsley's face hardened. "There has not been a single confirmed case of such a thing. A nasty scare tactic. I take it you heard this from Parkinson?"

Harry said nothing.

Kingsley went on. "I believe that such rumors are being spread by purebloods wishing to cause unrest, perhaps even another war. If word spread that the Insurgents were doing things severe enough to anger Voldemort's supporters...it would be catalyst enough for widespread devastation."

Harry sneered. "So we're just going to wait until they kill innocent people and _then _arrest them? How does that make sense? How is that justice?"

"Justice is an idealistic notion, Harry." Kingsley suddenly declared. "This is law."

"It's rubbish."

Kingsley sighed and then continued as if Harry had never interrupted. "But then, it goes both ways. It's a very tense balance. If the Mud Insurgents formulate an attack, Voldemort's supporters will crack down. Or if _they _do first, the Insurgents will do the same, I've no doubt. Some of their philosophy is...troubling, to say the least. So this time, as you can see, is a minefield. Any little thing could set off a trigger."

Harry wanted to move, leave, _lead_; do something already. He did not want to wait-and-see, wait and see for more, more posturing, more bloodshed, more murder.

"So what do we do?" he asked urgently.

"All I need from you, Harry, is to interrogate Parkinson." Kingsley leaned forward suddenly, his eyes boring into Harry's. Harry had never seen him look so intently at anyone. "It is imperative that we get all the information she has, and quickly. If we can take down enough actual Death Eaters from inside the 'traditionalist' groups, they will soon be dissolved."

Harry cringed.

"I mean, yeah, of course I'll get information off her. But, you have other people you can ask, right?" he said. "Other testimonies, other Death Eaters in Azkaban…Even Parkinson's parents would be better choices."

With a flick of his wand, Kingsley brought his quill back to life, and it continued its scribbling as he looked on, his mouth twitching slightly. "Her parents seem to be quite skilled in the art of Occlumency, and are not talking. As for the rest, we've done what we can through Legilimency against Death Eaters as well as cross-examining their allies. But it's not everyone. Voldemort made sure that his lower followers be kept as separate and secret as they could, not knowing each other unless they had to. So, please, Harry, do what I ask of you. And soon."

As if waving him goodbye, Kingsley sent a stack of documents towards Harry's direction and then turned his attention to whatever it was he was previously working on. It was clear Harry was being dismissed. He turned stiffly, feeling unsatisfied and restless.

Queerly, the feeling reminded him that he still needed to write to Ginny.

* * *

Harry returned home from training in a foul mood.

It had been an off day by all means. He was so distracted by his meeting with Kingsley that during the Stealth and Tracking practice, he had knocked over a prop pillar, which knocked into another, creating a bit of a domino effect with him at the center.

He was embarrassed, pissed. He had gotten it into his head that the other Aurors loved to see him fail, despite having no evidence to support his theory. He didn't need any.

So feeling very anti-Kingsley, anti-Ministry, anti-everything, Harry flung open Pansy's door without a single premeditated thought of his method of interrogation. She was sitting on top of her bed, reading one of Malfoy's letters, which she promptly thrust behind her back and out of Harry's sight. Harry wondered if that was all she ever did when she was up here; read and re-read his old letters, cling to dead words that were long devoid of any meaning. It was kind of sad. If she were anyone else, he would have felt sorry for her.

"What?" she hissed at him when he just stood there, staring. "_What?_" she asked again, sharper.

"Do you know Occlumency?" he said to her at last. She looked at him like he was mad.

"No…? Why?"

Harry shrugged. "Just wondering, I guess."

She crossed her arms. "You pop in and ask if I can perform _Occlumency_ and expect me to believe it's just common curiosity? Please." A sudden thought struck her and she glowered. "If you try to get inside my mind, I'll gut you in your sleep."

"I _was_ just curious," Harry countered. "It's kind of rare. And since both your parents can, I just wondered - "

"What are you talking about? My mum can't do Occlumency," said Pansy, and then snapped her mouth shut as if she couldn't believe it had actually offered information about her family.

"Huh," said Harry.

"'_Huh,'_" Pansy mocked. "Do you always sound like an inbred buffoon, or is it just around me?"

He frowned at her, knowing he should get down to it already. The questions bubbled forth in his head, professional, rehearsed: Have you, or any member of your family, participated in the Dark Arts? Did you, or any member of your family, support Voldemort during his rise to power? Are you aware of any current Death Eaters at large? Refusal to answer any and all questions will render you subject to…

He thought of Kingsley's drooping mouth, and the orders he had issued from it. Harry added the subtext: Do what I ask of you, Harry, don't ask questions, Harry, just _trust me,_ Harry.

The voice that came out of Kingsley's mouth sounded disturbingly like Dumbledore's.

Good old Harry Potter. Follows orders without question. Always.

"I guess you just bring out the worst in me." He shut her door and went to his room, his unasked inquiries burning a hole in his chest.

* * *

The next night, Harry was still poring over the papers that Kingsley had given him when he heard a knock on his door. He was a bit glad for the diversion; the documents weren't making much sense to him. They were filled with names and faces of people he'd never even heard of and he failed to see the point of scouring through them, how it could help them catch Death Eaters.

He opened the door to Hermione, her face morose. It looked like she had just been crying.

She made a valiant effort at smiling. "Hello there. How are you, Harry?"

Harry made a noise that sounded like a laugh but wasn't. He reached for her and felt something tight and uncomfortable in his chest leave him the moment she embraced him. He hadn't even realized it was there until it was gone.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey," she answered.

Hermione stepped inside and he took her coat, pinning it to the rack beside the door.

"Why didn't you just Apparate straight inside?" he asked her as he did.

"Oh, I-I didn't want to be presumptuous. You know, after last time," she said softly.

"God, sorry, I didn't realize you'd feel…" Harry wanted to kick himself. Of _course _Hermione felt rejected. He had rejected her.

Looking at her stricken expression, he didn't think he had the strength to do it again.

Her eyes trailed over the papers on his table. "What are these? Have you found another Death Eater?"

"Uh, yeah, maybe." Harry drew his wand and sent the papers away, partly because he didn't want Hermione to have to worry about it, and partly because he selfishly wanted all of her attention on him.

He wasn't quick enough. "The Mud Insurgents! Why, I've read about them!" She turned to him, that hungry look in her eye that she got whenever she was unraveling a mystery, a look that often mirrored Harry's.

"You have? When? What did you find out?"

"Recently," she said, sitting down and motioning for him to bring back the papers. He did, only a little bit reluctantly. "Very recently. After everything that Pansy said...I couldn't help myself. I started searching through pureblood assault records, then with Muggle-born theory and extremist theory, and finally touched upon the Insurgents. They're impossible to research through ordinary means. Seemingly en masse, the mainstream public just isn't reporting them. I had to…" she shifted a bit in her seat. "I had to go to Knockturn Alley to find something even remotely substantial."

Harry sat, visibly upset. "Hermione, you can't go there. You're the most famous Muggle-born witch in the world! It's dangerous."

Hermione's eyes shot to the ceiling but she blushed. "Hardly. Besides, I altered my appearance, no one even suspected it was me. So anyway, what I found was —"

"Just —" Harry took hold of Hermione's hand, threaded his fingers through hers. Her gaze fell down to them, looking surprised. He hated that she was still surprised when he touched her in places that didn't lead to fucking. "Just be careful, all right? If anything happened to you, I…"

He frowned deeply, unable to figure out how to finish his sentence. Why were words so elusive? Whenever he needed them most, they'd always been so terribly _not there_.

"I'm fine," she murmured, rubbing her thumb against his knuckles. "Perfectly fine. Anyway," she cleared her throat, "The Insurgents are supposed to be a leaderless organization, but I believe that two wizards seem to be leading the ranks."

She flickered through his documents, finally found a decent photo and thrust it towards Harry triumphantly.

"Look, see? These two keep popping up. And it's just the way they stand, the way they move. Like they're running things."

The photo was a group of wizards and witches huddled in a dingy looking room, some sitting and some standing, looking almost normal if not for the fact that they were all donning brown robes of the same shade. Hermione pointed to one wizard, short, tan skin, dark features - and another, the exact opposite: Tall, pale, haunted eyes.

"Do you know who they are?" Harry asked as he observed them.

"As for the short one, no idea. No information on him. But the other, his name's Yegor Krupin, and — doesn't he look familiar?"

Harry squinted hard at the man, his piercing blue eyes squinted right back.

"Uh...maybe?"

Hermione huffed, seemingly at a loss as to how Harry could have missed it. "I saw it straight away, so I looked into his birth records, just to be sure. Krupin isn't his paternal last name. It's Dolohov!"

"What?" Harry was shocked, squinted harder. There, in his nose, his jaw, he saw it, the likeness - the relation to Antonin Dolohov, Death Eater extraordinaire. "So, what, is he his brother?"

"Half brother," Hermione corrected. "All I know is, his mother was a Muggle, and he's taken her last name instead of his father's. So you can probably guess how it went."

Harry nodded. It wasn't uncommon; pureblood wizards out for an easy lay during a time when attending Muggle brothels and the like was socially acceptable, depending on your social circle. Sometimes it was innocent; a brief and consensual fling, but it usually wasn't. And sticking around for an unwanted pregnancy with a Muggle girl? Out of the question.

"What else did you find out about them?"

Hermione chewed her lip. "Well, it was from a rather biased source, so we really can't take it all at face value. Most, if not all, are probably lies, just things to make purebloods feel indignant or self-righteous. Assault, muggings, theft, things like that…"

She looked troubled, and Harry could imagine why.

"It's just...they're _Muggle-borns_, you know? They can't be...can't be…" Hermione stared at the papers dolefully.

"Okay," Harry began, wanting to spare her from her brain, "So all we know so far is one of the leaders is half-arsed Dolohov's half-blood, half brother" — Hermione smiled, and Harry liked that he could make her smile — "The Mud Insurgents have a bad reputation in pureblood communities, and Kingsley thinks they're _potentially _dangerous, but presently harmless. And there's also something he's keeping from me, I think." He frowned, the cogs in his head screeching to a halt.

He and Hermione talked well into the night, tossing out hypotheses, each one wilder than the next but it felt _good_. Like they had a purpose again. Hermione was getting that almost manic gleam in her eye and she was leaning forwards more as their discussion deepened, her cheeks glowing and her demeanor unpretentious, totally focused.

It was hot, to be honest.

"Are you staying over tonight?" Harry finally blurted.

She blinked, her speech stuttering.

"Oh, ah, yes, well."

Hermione fiddled with her hair like she sometimes did when she was self conscious. "I would very much appreciate if you'd let me spend the night here. Ron and I had a fight and I don't really feel like sleeping at Hogwarts."

Harry felt something leap in his chest at her words, but it was quelled with the guilt that he had just felt satisfaction over his friend's unhappiness.

"Hermione, I told you. Always. You can always come here." he said, the guilt not making him any more of a better person or her any less lovely.

She opened and closed her mouth, searching for words. "Thank you. I can sleep on the couch, if you'd like."

Harry couldn't think of anything that he'd like less.

"I mean...if you wanted to…"

_God, why am I being such a wimp?_ Harry thought. _It's _Hermione. _I've been with her a million times. I should just kiss her, touch her, throw her on the table already! _

Hermione twisted the engagement ring on her finger.

"Do you want some sherbet?" he asked stupidly. Her eyebrows furrowed and she probably thought he was as awkward as he felt.

"Sherbet?"

"Yeah, I just bought some. Pumpkin flavored. It's good." What the _hell_ was he doing? Trying to be Hermione's gal pal and eat ice cream while discussing menstrual cramps?

Hermione smiled a bit, her eyes still touched with bemusement. "Um, sure. I'll have some."

"Okay, cool. You can go head up to my room, and...I'll bring up a couple bowls." _Thattaboy, Harry. Ease into it casually. _

_Ugh. Creepy. Reminder to never say 'thattaboy' out loud._

Hermione smiled and went upstairs and Harry conjured his bowls, lifted perfect spheres of pleasantly orange dessert into them with his wand. He was battling internally with himself, although "battling" was too forgiving a word. It was more like rationalizing.

_I shouldn't sleep with her. _

_But I want to. Badly._

_It isn't like _not _shagging her would suddenly make me more noble. It's happened too many times for that._

_Ginny and I are on a break, right? Right?_

_And her and Ron…_

_Ron…_

_Fuck it. _

What happened next was a bit like stepping out of his own life and into someone else's; a pleasanter one, a less complex one. Hermione was playing a Weird Sisters album —

"I didn't know you liked the Weird Sisters."

"I don't. But it's all you have. You should really expand your tastes, Harry."

"You can't expand on perfection."

— and the two sat on his bed and ate, laughing about nothing and everything. Even his room seemed brighter, more cheerful; it was just that kind of night. Hermione somehow got sherbet on her cheek and Harry pretended to move to smudge it off, but instead sprayed whipped cream at her from the tip of his wand. She squealed, wrestling with him.

"Oh, hang on Hermione, you've got something on your face. Let me just get that for you — "

"That's not fair, I don't know this spell! Why do you know a whipped cream spell, you degenerate!"

She blasted him with water and it smeared the whipped cream on her face and it was so _easy_, leaning in and kissing her mouth that tasted like sticky sugar, _easy _to trip off to his shower together, groping and snogging. So easy to make this feel warm and justified instead of dark or shameful, falling into his bed.

Harry watched as Hermione's head traveled further down his body, her tongue darting out to set bits of him on fire. His nipple. The skin between his ribcage. The inside of his thigh. The side of his cock.

"You are cruel, Granger," Harry groaned, his prick actually twitching for her to touch it more thoroughly. She smirked up at him.

"Whatever do you mean?" she asked innocently, dragging one finger up and down his shaft. She took one of his balls in her mouth and suckled on it while that maddening finger kept up its path. Torture. Unbelievably good torture.

Harry reached down to grab some of her hair, tugged on it until she gave him a wincing smile because it always made her wetter when he pulled her hair. He didn't know why, and he didn't ask. He wasn't sure if he'd like the answer.

"Have I ever told you how good you look with my cock in your mouth?" he said, his lips curving into a grin. She laughed, her breath tickling his sensitive flesh.

"Really, Harry, is that the best you've got?" she said before pressing a kiss to the side of his length again. His hips jerked at her touch, and Harry shuddered.

"No, it's not," he said suggestively. "If you want to see the _best_ I've got, well…" He nodded to his painful erection and made a clicking noise out of the side of his mouth.

Her mouth dropped, scandalized, but she was still suppressing a grin. "Did you just click your cheek at me?"

Harry cast his gaze upward as if contemplating her question very deeply. "Yeah, I believe I did. And yet, unacceptably, my dick is still dry. Better hop to."

Hermione's eyebrow arched, a wicked smile at her lips. "I suppose I should. Hop to."

Locking eyes with Harry, her long fingers took hold of the base of his shaft and he could've sworn his heart stopped as her lips parted to swallow him. It may have been a joke just to egg her on, but Hermione really did look fantastic with his dick stuffed in her mouth. Cheeks full, face flushed, mouth erotically wide, soft lips pink and glistening with saliva and pre-cum; she was mesmerizing. Her clever tongue could swirl him into a frenzy. Harry groaned and struggled not to thrust upwards as she bobbed up and down on his cock.

She took him fully, to the hilt, and his hands twisted in the sheets when he hit the back of her throat. She hollowed her cheeks. Sucked hard. Made him moan. Hermione had only just begun and Harry was already muttering a stream of curses, the muscles in his stomach tensing. Slowly, centimeter by centimeter, Hermione's lips journeyed up to his head, tonguing his slit. She lathed her tongue across it and Harry gasped, pleasured.

Then, as quickly as it had taken him, her mouth made its departure. He watched her, confused, as her mouth widened a bit more, and then —

He jerked out of the way as her teeth clamped down in the space his cock had occupied just a moment before.

Hermione threw her head back, laughing, and after a moment of shock Harry joined her, his own laughter disbelieving and slightly frightened.

"_Wo-oah! _You're scary," he said, his eyes wide. Hermione hunched up her shoulders as she giggled, her eyes scrunching up with the force of her laughter.

"Oh, relax, I wasn't actually going to do anything," she assured him, her eyes glinting mischievously. "But perhaps next time you'll be more polite whilst instructing someone to suck you off."

Maybe Harry should've been put out, should've launched into a rant about not belittling men's castration fears, but he didn't. He was too happy to see her so happy in his presence. It had been a long time since he'd last seen Hermione so carefree.

"You're lucky you didn't," he said, taking her bodily in his arms and throwing her down onto the bed. "Otherwise, you'd be outta luck. No more of all this — " Harry gestured down himself, "Nope. You'd be cut off. Nothing for it."

She wrapped her legs around his waist. "Oh no, please, Harry, what cruel punishment!" Harry brought his fingers to her ribs, tickling her, and she gasped for breath as she giggled while trying to fight off his hands. "I couldn't possibly live without your — _stop it, I'm ticklish!_ — without your _glorious_ phallus."

Harry kissed her, then, because the joke was inadvertently touching on something real. Which of them really had the strength to cut off the other? Who would it be easier for?

She did it once, even if it hadn't lasted all that long. Would she do it again?

Her hips wiggled a bit, and the teasing presence at his dick turned his breathing ragged.

"Is this the _best_ you were speaking of?" she challenged. Harry smiled.

"It's coming."

He kissed her lips for a moment, felt her hum around the wetness of his tongue, and then went downwards.

Harry loved Hermione's body. The curves of it, the softness, the pinks and whites and scars still fading. Loved how hard her nipples got when he licked them and then blew. Loved how it squirmed when he touched certain spots. Loved how it touched him back, folded and squeezed around him.

She stopped breathing when his tongue swiped up her slit. She tasted salty and vaguely tangy, her arousal seeping through her folds. Harry sank his face in deeper, taking her completely with his mouth, savoring her. Hermione arched against him, losing herself.

"Yes, oh…"

He ate her like he was bloody starving for it. Lapping and sucking and teeth grazing almost enough to hurt; curling, ten of her fingers curling and her toes curling and his tongue curling inside her.

He shifted her hips up a bit more so he could explore her further. Sucked fully on her clit. He spread her arse apart, gave her pussy another wet kiss and then left it to swirl his tongue around her hole.

"Cheeky," she breathed, and then moaned when his tongue pressed against her more urgently, poking inside of her. He brought one of his hands to slip between her folds and rubbed, hard, not really caring where he was touching her because she cried out regardless and he was getting lost in the delirium himself.

He owned her, really, in this way. He wasn't sure what it meant that he enjoyed that feeling.

Maybe he just liked possession, liked to have things and people as _mine, all mine!_, like the spoiled little boy that he never got to be.

When she gave herself to him like this nothing could take her away; not nightmares, not bad men in dark cloaks, not even wedding rings. Those broken sounds were for him, the wetness on her thighs for him. The fact that he could make her sob with his fingers, his mouth, his cock, meant more to him than he cared to admit. She was _his _friend, _his_ advisor and his lover and his...everything, really, if he took the time to think about it. She touched every single damn part of his life. And when _he_ touched her _there _("Ah! Harry! Oh my God, don't stop, don't stop!") he was her life. If just for a night. Just for a moment.

"Harry!" she cried out again, and he realized he liked his name best when she was screaming it.

Hermione's body seized up and then unraveled, arching and bucking, and she was already coming so hard she could scarcely breathe but she was still begging him for more.

When the tension left her body, Harry extricated himself from between her thighs, which she had clamped around his head, and watched as she trembled and collected her breath. Still panting, she raised herself up to circle her arms around his neck and straddle his lap.

"Not horrible, then?" he teased, sucking on her neck.

"Y-yeah, it was satisfactory. I suppose," Hermione said breathlessly.

Harry laughed. "Oh, professor, is there anything I can do to bring that Satisfactory up to an Excellent?"

He groaned as she lowered herself down onto him. Her cunt was even better than her mouth.

"I think we can work something out," she gasped as she rocked against him.

They had never made love like this before. There was usually no talking, no levity; it was mostly just _get in, clothes off; yes I'm gonna come; oh god what are we doing; you feel so good make me come again; I hate myself; see you tomorrow night?; I don't know...maybe next week...; No. Tomorrow. Please; Okay._

So the joking around, this feeling of buoyancy, Harry didn't know what to make of it. Maybe it was the fact that Ginny and Ron felt very far away, or maybe it was because there was a plot afoot that only he and Hermione could solve, him and her against the world, and it felt like they were both sixteen again and people died and they both could die but it wasn't that bad because nothing was that bad, not yet, not back then, not now. He didn't know what to make of it, so he just enjoyed it.

"How do I feel?" he murmured, smiling, against the skin of her wrist. She bit her lip and sighed out a laugh as she sank down onto him again.

"You feel long. Perfect. You make me feel full. And warm...everywhere." Soft, wonderful noises spilled out of her mouth as Harry swiped his tongue along her earlobe and at the juncture between her collarbone and neck; hot wetness along her veins and tendons.

She squeezed him, then, inside her, making Harry gasp aloud.

"How do I feel?" she asked, her turn to smirk, her turn to watch him squirm. He laughed at her unusual boldness until she bared down on him again and he had to moan.

"You feel so good," he said, grinning, canting his hips up to hers. "So fucking good. So wet."

He sucked hard on her nipple and let it go with a pop.

"So tight."

He slipped one of his fingers into his own mouth and sucked, tasting her juices, slicking his finger with saliva.

"So hot."

Hermione stared down at him, thrilled, transfixed, as he brought his spit-spoaked index behind her and filled her opening. He stroked inside her in time with his dick, and she had to move her hands from his chest to the headboard to help her hold herself up. She closed her eyes, face lit in ecstasy and moaning, reaching for him like sunflowers reaching for their star.

Harry's entire body was reacting to her, electrified with the feeling of touching and being touched. It was so much, so much sensation and so much pleasure and so much joy in his chest because he didn't have to think when he was with her; not of war or death or the future, he just had to be and just had to feel and oh Merlin did she make feeling easy. He smoothed his hands over her body and gripped her waist as they moved together, overcome with desire.

"I love you," Harry breathed without thinking, so quiet even he could barely hear it.

Immediately, the tone changed.

Hermione's expression darkened. No more giggling, no more teasing. Her grip on the headboard turned vice-like and Harry, quite frankly, didn't know what to do. He kissed her, whispered her name sweetly on her mouth, hoped if they'd both just ignore his reckless words the stupid things would just shrivel and die; ugly, bloated corpses landing on the pavement, c'mon folks let's move it along now, nothing to see here, just keep it moving...

She broke the kiss and panted above him, fucking herself on his cock roughly, so rough he would've been concerned if not for the blistering sensation it was shooting through his body.

Harry felt Hermione's hand clutch some of the hair on his chest, then reach up to his neck and squeeze. The pressure around his throat gave Harry both a depraved thrill and the uneasy knowledge that she was purposely rendering him incapable of long speech.

He and Hermione were now nothing more than two moaning and grunting bodies, slamming against each other for warmth and orgasm. Actually, Harry didn't even do any of the work now; Hermione raised herself up by her thighs and cried out every time she crashed back down on him, hard. Way too hard. Over and over. Pound, pound, pound. Closer to violence than sex.

Harry was suddenly cold.

He almost asked her to stop.

But traitorous pleasure wound itself around his stomach, reached his fingers, toes, behind his eyelids as Hermione ground against him in search of her own. The lack of air getting into his lungs due to her grip on his throat was actually making him come quicker than normal; a shameful high.

He shut his eyes as he came, staring into blackness.

Harry was outside of himself. He felt climax and he did not, felt whole and did not, felt loved and did not.

But when he opened his eyes the evidence of his orgasm was there, dripping between Hermione's shaking thighs. For just a moment, maybe even less than that, really — Harry hated his body, wished that it could be pure and untouched again.

He coughed a bit as Hermione removed her fingers from around his throat, the oxygen rushing in. She slid off of him, apart from him, and reached for her wand beside the bed to clean herself with a _scourgify _spell. Harry followed suit, but did not feel clean.

She got under the covers, turned so that her back was to him. Harry watched it rise and fall unevenly with her breathing. Her pale back was marked with red where he had maybe gripped her too tight, maybe that was from his nail, or this light one was from Ron's —

"I didn't mean to say it. It doesn't count, anyways, during sex. It didn't count." He hoped his tone was lighter than he felt.

Silence.

"Hermione."

A shaking of her shoulders. The quiet stuffed itself down Harry's throat, made his lungs fill up with its poison and he had to expel it or it would kill him.

He couldn't put a word to this constricting, airless feeling. Not guilty, not angry, not sad, not weary; but some combination of them.

So he focused on anger, because if he was going to feel something, that was the easiest to feel. The one he was most used to.

"Okay, what the fuck, Hermione," he snapped. "Is this all we are? Not even friends anymore? You can't even let me know what's going on with you? Stop acting like a fucking headcase for five seconds and _talk to me_."

Hermione started to cry. Or maybe just continued. How much time has to pass between sessions of crying for it to constitute as a separate jag? And if it's always for the same reason, are you just _always _crying, with short breaks just to pee or eat or shag?

He threw his arm across his face and sighed, let himself shut his eyes for a few seconds. The strangled noises she was making gave his sudden headache a pulse, and the guilt overpowered this weird rejected feeling, as much as he tried not to let it.

"Hermione. Please. _Please_, stop crying."

She fell on her back and brought her hands to cover her face. The tears did not stop.

"I d-don't know what I'm doing," Hermione choked out. Her terrible sobs were shaking the bed. "Harry, please don't think I know what I'm doing. I don't know. I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt a-anyone."

He let out a breath and restrained himself from touching her, knowing she would take it the wrong way.

"I know, Hermione, I know, it's fine. I'm not in love with you. Nothing's changed. We're fine," he said soothingly, wondering if this might be the first time in documented history that a man had to assure a woman that he _didn't_ love her to get her to stop crying.

She curled into a ball in his sheets, as if she were trying to make herself invisible.

"This wasn't supposed to turn into...that. You can't love me. You just _can't_."

"I don't, I told you, I don't. But..."

He shrank down with her, trying to connect again. She seemed to be withdrawing further and further into herself. "Would it really be that bad? If I loved you?" he asked quietly. "You know...hypothetically." He didn't entirely know why he was even asking her this. Masochism, he supposed. Or possibly sadism.

Hermione turned her face into his mattress, made a wretched sound that forced him to look away out of discomfort, and then turned to him again, her face red and soggy. "Yes. Because then it would be real. And we'd have to stop everything. I don't want real. I already have too much real. So don't."

Fresh tears still leaked from her eyes but at least she was quieter now. He still didn't dare touch her.

"Yeah, no, I mean...I don't want real either," Harry said, and for some strange reason, it felt like he was lying.

Hermione's face crumpled before Harry, and her voice was suddenly tinny, child-like. "I love him."

Harry turned away from her, rested his eyes on the ceiling. "I know you do. I do too."

Her eyes were boring into him; he could feel his skin burning where they did. "I need him," she said softly. "I can't lose him."

Harry turned completely on his side so she could only see his back. An intense, desperate desire to tell her to fuck right off roared in his chest, so he didn't want her to see his face. She'd probably guess his thoughts in an instant, and if she saw, then she might actually leave. And the only thing worse than her being there right then, would be her gone.

He didn't know what else to say, or do, or think, so Harry just listened to Hermione cry herself to sleep. It was awful, lasted a long time, and made him long for numbness.

That night, Harry swore to himself that he would never tell Hermione that he loved her ever again.

God, why did that horrible word keep cropping up anyways? He wasn't in love with Hermione. Of course not. It was a slip of the tongue in the throes of passion. She was his friend, his best friend. Who he loved as a friend, and happened to like to fuck.

There's a difference.

Isn't there?

* * *

Harry woke up in an empty bed.

He wasn't altogether surprised, so he assumed the feeling in his chest was disappointment. The sheets still smelled like her. His skin probably did too.

Looking down at himself, he saw the unmistakable rise of his morning stiffy underneath the thin sheet of his bedspread. He stared down at his Cursed Cock with apathy, this thing between his legs that made women cry and then disappear. The nerve of it, springing to attention after all the trouble it's caused.

He showered and had a wank so brutally existential that even the greatest minds in philosophy would tell him to take it down a peg. Feeling wretched, he and his limp penis wandered back into his room to see a Hogwarts owl swoosh in through the window and flitter excitedly on his dresser, a letter resting in its talons.

Harry took hold of the letter and stroked the top of bird's head. It blinked expectantly for some food and nipped Harry's fingers when he was too busy examining its delivery to offer its rightful earnings, so Harry mumbled his thanks and fed the owl a treat, his eyes still on the brown parchment in his hands.

Nervous, he tore it open.

_Harry _

_I just wanted to say that I was sorry for what I said about Hermione. That was wrong of me. I want her to be okay just as much as you do. You know how much I care about her, and I only said what I did because I was angry at you. It still doesn't make it right, and for that I apologize. _

_You, on the other hand, can eat shit. _

_Ginny_

Harry sat back, smiling just a bit. Weird as it may seem, her suggestion for him to consume feces was actually a good sign. They could be all right, him and Ginny, if he just made a bit more effort.

His smile dropped. Maybe they shouldn't be all right. He had tried to end things once, after all. Maybe he should just let this stick, let her stew in her anger and then forget about him in the arms of some other man, for good, forever.

But it was painful to think of, and Harry was so tired of pain.

Some martyr he turned out to be.

When the martyr survives, was he ever a real one? That's kind of the defining feature of martyrs; _you have to actually die, you prick. _But he didn't die, and now a martyr he could never truly be, no matter how many people wrap the word around him like a poorly fitting cloak. He was just some bastard in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it was looking as if he was just as selfish as the next schmuck. Maybe even more so.

And the most pathetic thing was, he did want Ginny with him. Now. Badly. It was a physical craving. After the horrible night with Hermione; the viciously high highs and the comically low lows, he desperately wanted Ginny to be there and to look up at him with her big, adoring eyes; look at him as if he wasn't the pile of shit that he felt like he was. She always saw the best version of him, the one that he wanted to be.

So what if she didn't always see the _real_ him? Does anyone really want that? Maybe the person you should be with doesn't see the _real _you; just the person you should be, the person you could be.

With this thought in mind, Harry quickly dressed himself before sitting down with a quill and fresh parchment.

_Ginny_

_I'm so sorry, Gin. I can't sleep without you, can't eat, I miss you so much. I love you, I love you, you're everything to me, and I _

Harry crumpled up the parchment he was filling with empty words and threw it away. Tried again.

_Ginny_

_Listen. I know I'm not perfect and neither are you. I still think we have something good together, really good, but you can't fly off the handle any time you feel like _

Ripped to shreds, thrown in the bin.

_Ginny_

_I care about you so much. But I hate living with this guilt. I've been sleeping with Hermione. I know you'll hate me, and _

Crossed out, spat upon, shredded, set on fire.

Words were stupid and useless when it came to this. His words, anyway. Jumbled and conflicting and _stupid_, utterly so. Harry couldn't think of any good ones.

Radio silence it was, then. At least for now.

"Potter! _Potter!_" Pansy screeched at him from outside his door, knocking frantically. He had immediately set up a locking enchantment once he found out she'd taken to stealing his clothes. There was also a silencing charm up, but that was for a less acceptable reason.

He opened his door, irritated. "What do you want?"

"There are people here! I heard them downstairs!" Her eyes were wide, panicked. Harry sighed.

"I'm an Auror, Parkinson. I'm going to get Ministry visitors."

She seemed to be exasperated by his lack of concern. "Just check! Just check to make sure! And bring your wand!"

Harry shouldered past her and hurried downstairs, her paranoia affecting him, just a little.

Crackling in from his fireplace and smoothing their robes were Kingsley, Ron, Neville Longbottom, and two older Aurors named Deborah Congo and Hassan Asghar.

Ron nodded to Harry, and Harry nodded back. No hard feelings since their little tiff. But Harry felt his body grow heavy, as if Hermione was still clinging to it.

"Harry," said Kingsley, voice as booming as ever. "Inform Parkinson that we're here, and tell her she has fifteen minutes to prepare herself. Same for you."

"Prepare ourselves? For what?"

Neville spoke up, grinning wide.

"We're gonna infiltrate England's pureblood orthodoxy. And she's gonna help us."

* * *

A/N: Damn that was long! Haha I considered breaking it into two chapters but it didn't feel right, you know? Let me know what you guys thought! Like: Do you think Pansy's totally evil still? Should Harry and Ginny even try to reconnect? Isn't it awesome Hermione likes getting her salad tossed?! So progressive of her.


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